UCD's internet connection: Pathetic, still just pathetic

OTNiner

Dionysus wrote: »

Same problem recurred this morning on my Sony Vaio; UCD never lets me down on the increasingly rare times I decide to come in and study here. I couldn't fix the connection by the usual 'diagnose and repair' way, so went out of the library and rang 2700 and he suggested I bring the laptop over to the IT guys.

Went back into the library, got the laptop and brought it over to the IT place and they said the problem is that the UCD system has difficulties generally with Microsoft Vista (which I have). I would have thought they should have sorted this out by now considering there must be thousands of us here who use Vista. If Vista can work anywhere else then the problem is with UCD's system, not with Vista. They should accept this and sort it out.

Anyway, the IT guy (who was really sound, in fairness to him) finally got the laptop working but said there's no guarantee it will work when I get back to the library. Amazingly, according to him the James Joyce Library has one of the weakest internet signals in the entire University. You couldn't invent this stuff. Is anybody thinking in UCD?

Got back to the library and it wouldn't work. Grrrrr. Went down to the SU Shop and paid €2.70 as suggested above and got a Network Patch Cable. Came back up to the library and, without changing a single thing, the connection was working before even using the cable.

What an absolute fu cking waste of 2 hours arseing about in this hole. That the university cannot provide a simple, straightforward reliable internet connection on a regular basis is incompetence of the highest order. Is Brady and his little army of overpaid goons even aware of this? I am certainly aware of the increase in my fees in the past year for an internet service which is at least as bad as it was six years ago. I am paying those fees for the library, the internet connection and the name. The first two things are what impact most upon my daily life here.

/rant. (I hope I still have a connection by the time I go to post this.)

The problem is (most likely) with manufacturer fine tuning of the power saving settings for Wireless with VISTA - which Microsoft themselv do not reccommend using.

My previous post has instructions on how to check and resolve this issue.

If you post or PM me with your MAC address I can check where and when your machine was working or refusing to accept a valid DHCP offer. This can be founf by running the command ipconfig /all from within a command shell.

griffdaddy

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

The problem is your laptop - not ucd or its wireless.

thousands of other students have few or no problems with it, except at results times but come on in fairness thats expected.

no seriously, im not trying to be a príck but I for example have never had a problem with ucd wireless.
I didnt even have to set up my laptop for wireless i just checked auto detect proxies settings and was working straight away and for the last 2 and a half years.

Well you've been very lucky then. I've had laptops running Vista, Windows 7, and Ubuntu, as well as a Nokia N95 running Symbian all encounter problems in the ucd library, as did many of my friends. Once you go outside of the library though it is very reliable. I know for a fact it's not the problem of my equipment, as it's only with the ucd library that the problems arise.

Dionysus

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

The problem is your laptop - not ucd or its wireless.

thousands of other students have few or no problems with it, except at results times but come on in fairness thats expected.

no seriously, im not trying to be a príck but I for example have never had a problem with ucd wireless.
I didnt even have to set up my laptop for wireless i just checked auto detect proxies settings and was working straight away and for the last 2 and a half years.

I can tell you for certain Conor that it's not. This is my third computer/laptop since I first started in UCD. The guy in UCD said that there is a well-established problem with Vista in the uni now and put it down to that. In other words, he admitted that the problem rests with the interaction between UCD and Microsoft Vista. Nevertheless, prior to that I had XP on a PC in Glenomena and it had huge problems. I've never had a reliable internet service here.

That the guy today was able to tell me that there is no guarantee that I'd get a signal when I went back to the library indicates that this is a well-known problem to UCD's IT community.

Furthermore, I have absolutely no problem getting access to the internet anywhere else I bring it where a wireless connection is available. None at all.

Dionysus

OTNiner wrote: »

The problem is (most likely) with manufacturer fine tuning of the power saving settings for Wireless with VISTA - which Microsoft themselv do not reccommend using.

My previous post has instructions on how to check and resolve this issue.

If you post or PM me with your MAC address I can check where and when your machine was working or refusing to accept a valid DHCP offer. This can be founf by running the command ipconfig /all from within a command shell.

Thanks, OTN. Sound man. I'll come back to this post if I go back in next Tuesday and consult you if that same issue recurs. Thanks again. (I had no problem getting access for the rest of today, by the way)

Dionysus

griffdaddy wrote: »

Well you've been very lucky then. I've had laptops running Vista, Windows 7, and Ubuntu, as well as a Nokia N95 running Symbian all encounter problems in the ucd library, as did many of my friends. Once you go outside of the library though it is very reliable. I know for a fact it's not the problem of my equipment, as it's only with the ucd library that the problems arise.

Thank you, griffdaddy! (and congratulations on precisely 1,500 posts)

See, I'm not imagining this, conor.hogan.2.

OTNiner

Dionysus wrote: »

Thanks, OTN. Sound man. I'll come back to this post if I go back in next Tuesday and consult you if that same issue recurs. Thanks again. (I had no problem getting access for the rest of today, by the way)

Out of curiosity were you plugged in while it stayed working - the issue I think is the root cause only occurs when operating on battery with power saving settings for wireless set to optimise battery life.

To dat I have noticed this appears to be common on Toshiba (Home v Business Class) and Acer's, other suspects to add to the list would be useful

chave

Everyone with a problem. . . . Get
a mac

Dionysus

OTNiner wrote: »

Out of curiosity were you plugged in while it stayed working - the issue I think is the root cause only occurs when operating on battery with power saving settings for wireless set to optimise battery life.

To dat I have noticed this appears to be common on Toshiba (Home v Business Class) and Acer's, other suspects to add to the list would be useful

No, because when I went back to the library after buying the network cable the internet was working fine as wireless. I just put the cable in my bag. I left the library 3 hours later and was over in the arts block until 10pm and it worked absolutely fine as wireless.

OTNiner

Dionysus wrote: »

No, because when I went back to the library after buying the network cable the internet was working fine as wireless. I just put the cable in my bag. I left the library 3 hours later and was over in the arts block until 10pm and it worked absolutely fine as wireless.

By plugged in I refered to Electricity not Network - you have a PM but your MAC address would help in getting to the bottom of this issue

Dionysus

OTNiner wrote: »

By plugged in I refered to Electricity not Network - you have a PM but your MAC address would help in getting to the bottom of this issue

Oh. Yeah, I was plugged in throughout. How would I have a MAC address on this Sony Vaio Windows laptop?

griffdaddy

Dionysus wrote: »

Oh. Yeah, I was plugged in throughout. How would I have a MAC address on this Sony Vaio Windows laptop?

The MAC address is like the unique code of your wifi card or ethernet card and is what identifies that piece of equipment on the network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

OTNiner

Dionysus wrote: »

Oh. Yeah, I was plugged in throughout. How would I have a MAC address on this Sony Vaio Windows laptop?

In VISTA

Start

type cmd into "start search" box - bottom right hand corner

black cod icon shoud be top of search

click on this to run it and it should open a new command shell window

type ipconfig /all

the resulting output should have a portion of the output something like below

the piece of information I am intrested in is the physical address


Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5350
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-16-12-06-5C-94
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

chave

OTNiner wrote: »

In VISTA

Start

type cmd into "start search" box - bottom right hand corner

black cod icon shoud be top of search

click on this to run it and it should open a new command shell window

type ipconfig /all

the resulting output should have a portion of the output something like below

the piece of information I am intrested in is the physical address


Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5350
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-16-12-06-5C-94
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

physical address is your MAC address nothing to do with Apple Macs. It means Media Access Control address. But aside from that apple macs are the best things ever for hassle free computing IMO.

Fad

chave wrote: »

physical address is your MAC address nothing to do with Apple Macs. It means Media Access Control address. But aside from that apple macs are the best things ever for hassle free computing IMO.

Took me two months of fúcking around with proxies every day before I could get on easily in UCD.

Upgraded to Snow Leopard just after new year and havent had a single problem since then.

bnt

If I have one message for anyone having connection trouble, it's this: get out of the Library. Get as far as you can from that central Library / Newman building area. Daedalus is OK, Engineering is good, Newstead is excellent.