Ethernet cables could soon become things of the past on the campus, as OIT officials said they aim to outfit all dorms with wireless Internet by next fall.

The university’s wireless network covers two thirds of all students living on the campus, with 1,300 access points serving 25 dorms, said Tripti Sinha, the director of networking and telecommunications services in the Office of Information Technology .

“In general, there is a user expectation, wherever you are, for a wireless connection,” she said.

Sophomore journalism major Henry Sheller said the expanded coverage freed him from his desk in his South Campus Commons 2 apartment.

“It lets me fulfill my dream of being on my bed, watching TV and being on the computer all at the same time,” he said.

Still, without wireless access in two major North Campus dorms, all but one of the South Campus Commons and most of Leonardtown, some students have been left tied to their desks.

Without wireless until a few days ago in his Worcester Hall dorm, sophomore aerospace engineering major Kevin Boyland said he struggled without the amenity when his ethernet cable did not consistently work last year.

“I’ve been going since second semester without the Internet,” he said.

For any student accessing the wireless Internet on the campus, three new networks – umd-secure, umd-fast and umd-secure-fast – will tighten security and speed up downloads.

Umd-secure, which was launched last fall, uses new encryption protocols to protect personal information.

OIT’s Director of Security Gerry Sneeringer said those using the university’s old network shouldn’t worry because most websites that require sensitive information automatically protect it, although umd-secure offers an added barrier against viruses and identity theft.

“The old umd network is like what you would find at Starbucks,” Sneeringer said.

However, getting access to the umd-secure network can be difficult because it requires changing default settings on the user’s computer. The process, as explained on OIT’s website, ranges from four to 19 steps, depending on the user’s computer and wireless card type.

The faster networks were both launched during the summer, and send information at around 54 megabytes a second, Sinha said.

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