For students across the campus without an Internet connection, the age-old saying has proved to be true: “You don’t appreciate something until it’s gone.”

Recently, students have grown increasingly frustrated with the spotty Internet connection across the campus in dorm rooms and lecture halls, prompting a flood of e-mails to the Department of Resident Life and the Office of Information Technology.

Officials said that while they are working to rectify the situation, it’s still unclear what the source of the campus-wide problem is.

“The wireless connection in general is more susceptible to interference because the radio waves hit the materials in the building, like concrete, which creates signal issues,” said Dai-An Tran, assistant director of information technology for Resident Life. “From what OIT explained, they have been trying to figure out where the dead spots are in our halls, and they’ve been active about seeing where the signals are weakest.”

OIT spokeswoman Phyllis Dickerson Johnson was unavailable for comment yesterday.

But many students — especially those without an Ethernet cord — said that it’s impossible to complete certain assignments without a continuous Internet signal and that doing homework efficiently is difficult.

“I couldn’t do my homework today for a while because they’re web assignments, and I don’t have an Ethernet cord,” said freshman business major Michael Bierman, a North Campus resident.

Even students with Ethernet cords, which connect computers to the Internet using wires, said they still have had trouble with inconsistent Internet signals.

“I couldn’t get on the Internet, and I even connected to an Ethernet cord and it still didn’t work,” freshman engineering major and North Campus resident Tiziana Antolino said.

But the Internet isn’t malfunctioning for just North Campus residents — it has also extended to students on South Campus.

“It’s terrible,” said Grace Boyle, a junior history major and South Campus Commons resident. “I tried to e-mail my professor a paper, and the Internet died. My grade went down because you lose a letter grade when it’s late.”

“It sucks, and it’s really frustrating,” senior biology major and Commons resident Sara Eckert said. “It’s really unfortunate when you’re taking a quiz on ELMS and you can only take it once. It keeps happening, and I have to restart my computer every five minutes. It’s a huge pain.”

Tran said OIT has been working in the dorms to improve connections.

“They’ve worked a lot behind the scenes to improve residence halls’ wireless traffic,” he said. “They basically rerouted traffic around the back end to improve connectivity and performance, and they’ve upgraded connectivity to our Internet service provider to provide more bandwidth.”

Tran also said the service provider isn’t entirely to blame.

“Individuals’ laptops are sometimes a factor in what you may consider spotty,” he said. “The hardware or software can affect connectivity. There’s multiple aspects going on that affects a person’s experience with the wireless.”

But for some students, the problem is following them out of the dorms and into the classrooms.

“We had problems in our media literacy class, and we couldn’t get the Internet to work,” sophomore music major Sarah Balzer said. “Everyone was getting pretty annoyed. It’s pointless to go if the Internet isn’t working.”

“It was really bad in my class today,” said junior elementary education major Laura Antonelli. “We had to pull up a worksheet off of the Internet, but no one could open them up. We all just sat there waiting for the Internet to work. It was a really unproductive class because of that.”

Tran said Resident Life and OIT tried to encourage students over the summer to use wired Internet because it generally doesn’t have as many problems. But the facts remain: Students prefer wireless service, and officials are trying to meet the high demand.

“We’re trying to figure out the current situation through OIT,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know exactly why [the Internet isn’t working]. We have received a lot of calls about it, but I still don’t know the exact reason for that.”

abutaleb at umdbk dot com