By: Sarah Monk
Due to recent issues surrounding Cameron University’s network, rumors have spread regarding the length of repair as well as possible changes coming to Cameron’s email and other network-run systems.
Director of Information Technology services Kelly McClure said he and his team are working hard to bring all of Cameron’s internet services back up and running to maximum capacity.
“The thing we’re waiting on right now… every building on campus has to be re-fibered,” McClure said. “We’ll kind of move from one building at a time, starting from the south side of Sheplar and working our way north.”
The new network seeks to bring better and higher-speed internet to Cameron students. McClure added that full fiber internet functionality has already been set up on the Duncan campus, if students wanted a glimpse of what was to come for Lawton.
In regards to rumors surrounding Google Drive availability, McClure explains that there were no immediate plans to separate Cameron University from Google.
“We are at some point going to separate ourselves from Google–but now we have no immediate plans to do that at all,” McClure said. “I would suggest you back that information up and keep it somewhere on some personal storage or flash drive, or in another Cloud storage space.”
McClure added that many of the issues surrounding the Cloud came from Google itself. The problem was so substantial that ITS had no choice but to make the swap to email via Microsoft Exchange.
McClure explained that many problems currently surrounding the network on campus stem from outdated hardware Information Technology Services (ITS) has been working on upgrading.
“Essentially our network is twenty four plus years old,” McClure said. “We started planning in 2019 to upgrade the network, and by planning, I mean, because it’s an expensive undertaking. There’s no way we could do that with the funding we had all in one year.”
In the meantime, Cameron University students and faculty have received an email explaining the network issues campus-wide, with McClure hoping it will clear up much of the confusion.