College Crunch

Many of the Colleges and Universities I have been to are starting to make sure that there is wireless Internet available nearly campus wide, and so if you have a wi-fi enabled device, you’ll want to make sure to take advantage of the service that they provide.

If you have issues connecting, usually your school’s information technology department will be able to help you, but if you have a platform that they don’t support, you might be on your own to seek out the needed answers.

Here are some tips and tricks that might help you connect:

Restart your device – Sometimes things happen, and not everything is working as it should be. Restarting your device can get things back on track, making it a great first step towards resolving your issue, and usually the first step any college technical support staff will make you do regardless of what you’ve previously done.

Turn off and then on your wireless card – Maybe it is just your wireless card that is having some issues, and in acting up, it is keeping you from connecting. Turning off the wireless card itself and then turning it back on can resolve that issue.

Make sure you are connecting to the right access point – Some schools have closed private and open public, others will have locked public and so you’ll need the password. Whatever the case, making sure your device is joining the College’s proper student wireless Internet connection is key.

Check your IP address – If your IP address says 169.x.x.x or 0.0.0.0 you aren’t really connected properly. Sometimes selecting the “renew IP address” button can resolve this issue. Otherwise, following each of the other steps, if you still get this address over and over, you might not be close enough to the wireless access point, or their may be further problems that you’ll want to diagnose or contact your College’s information technology group.