Author: Heinrich Griesenbach

Members’ meeting 2025 on January 6, 2026

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The general members’ meeting for the 2025 association year will take place on January 6, 2026.

Originally, a date in December was planned, but unfortunately there was not enough time at the end of the year.

A regular general members’ meeting is required by association law. Certain deadlines and formal requirements must be met, regardless of how full the calendar is at the end of the year. For this reason, the meeting will now be held at the beginning of January.

To avoid this situation in the future, we will probably move the general members’ meeting to the summer.

2025: an important year

2025 is a special year for the association.

It is the first year in which we have concluded the contract with the Studierendenwerk for operating the network. This means that a long-open issue has now also been formally clarified and placed on a stable basis.

Growth of the association

I am also pleased that I was able to invite 18 people to this year’s general members’ meeting.

Since the founding of the association, the number of members has therefore doubled.

It is increasingly noticeable that structure and activity in the association are slowly gaining momentum. Tasks are being distributed better, processes are becoming clearer, and engagement is growing steadily.

2025-12 What actually happens when you write to us?

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Since April, our support has been using a new ticket system: FreeScout.
Before that, things were often confusing, with only one inbox that was read and answered by several people. Now we have a better overview. And we have some numbers that we find quite interesting and would like to share with you.

Numbers since the start

193 people have written to us.
We have sent 610 replies.
That is about four per day.
We have now closed 216 tickets or cases.
For 81 of them, one reply was enough.

The biggest rush, as always, comes during move-in to the dormitory. There are many new people, and accordingly many questions.

How fast we reply

Short answer: usually quite fast.
About half of all requests are answered within one hour.
On average, it takes 48 minutes.

We do this on a voluntary basis. Without an office, without fixed hours. When there is a lot going on, like during move-in, we pay especially close attention so that no one has to wait too long for a reply.


When is a ticket finished?

This does not happen automatically for us.
When we reply and then do not hear back from you, we leave the ticket open for the time being. Maybe our answer helped. Maybe you need more time. Maybe the email got lost. We do not know.

At some point, when there is time, we go through the open tickets and close those where nothing more is happening.

That is why it looks like many tickets are only solved after more than two days. In reality, most of them are finished much earlier. We just do not press “closed” immediately.

How much back and forth is needed?

In three out of four cases, one or two replies are enough. Sometimes it takes a few more messages, or there is simply another “Thank you” and a “Have fun on the network” at the end. That makes the statistics longer, even though the topic was actually already finished.

Move-in phase and routers

The data clearly shows the move-in phase. And that many of you only start dealing with the topic of internet in the dormitory and routers after moving in.

Many then seem to go, under stress, to the nearest shop that sells routers and let themselves be sold whatever the shop wants to get rid of at the moment.

The problem:
These “specialist salespeople” unfortunately do not inform themselves at all about what our five and a half thousand users actually need.

It is really a shame when some of you ruin probably the best internet connection you have had so far, and will probably have in the next five to ten years, with a bad router.

In local retail, a router probably costs 30 percent more than online. That is completely fine.
But please do not buy anything that is already marked as insufficient on our website.

We really put a lot of effort into our guides. And if you are not sure about a device that is not on the list, just ask. We are happy to help you.

If you have questions, get in touch!

We usually reply quickly and do our best.
By now, we even know quite precisely how fast we reply.

2025-12-21 Preventive switch upgrade in Schwerzstraße

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In Schwerzstraße 2, one switch has been showing unusual values in our monitoring for some time. To avoid it failing over the holidays, when we might not be able to arrange a replacement or repairs at short notice, we will carry out a preventive upgrade to our current network equipment.

We plan to leave Tübingen on Sunday at around 12:00. Accordingly, we will arrive in Hohenheim during the afternoon and start the work there.

Please expect at least two hours of work. During this time, the network will be unavailable several times for short periods. We will update this blog post as soon as the work is completed.

If anything is still open after the upgrade, we will probably be able to follow up on Monday or Tuesday. But please contact us immediately if anything does not work after the upgrade.

2025-12-19 RT construction break over the holidays

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In recent weeks, there have unfortunately been repeated power outages as part of the ongoing construction work at Pestalozzistraße 41. According to the current status, these should come to an end with the start of the construction break from the evening of December 23 until January 7 inclusive.

On 23 December, the workers will gradually finish their work from around 4 p.m. From 5 p.m. onwards, we therefore ask you to report any noticeable problems to us immediately, so that on 24 December we still have the opportunity to replace any hardware that may have been damaged or to reach someone from the Studierendenwerk.

After 24 December, neither we nor external companies can be reached between Christmas and New Year in order to arrange short-term repairs. If a network cabinet is without power during this period, this can only be fixed after the end of the construction break.

Power is an essential requirement for your internet access. Without power, our network technology on site cannot function.

2025-12-11 Construction Work in Reutlingen

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We detected several outages today, including a longer one, at Pestalozzistraße 41 in our monitoring system.

While looking for the cause, we found out that there is intensive construction work going on in the building.

At the moment, all switches except one are online. The following rooms are connected to that switch:
Ground floor 8–12, 1st floor 117–121, 2nd floor 217–221, and 3rd floor 317–321.

We do not know whether these rooms are occupied during the renovation. If they are, please contact us immediately!

We will ask the Studierendenwerk what is going on.

Since all of our dormitories in Reutlingen are connected through this building, we hope that our hardware is not being damaged.

Update: A power line was cut and has now been repaired.

2025-11-30 Maintenance Upgrade Hibuka

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At the Hibuka in the French Quarter, we were able to recruit an Erasmus student for our working group for last week.

Many buildings in the quarter currently do not yet have gigabit connections in the rooms. We are using this opportunity to upgrade the local infrastructure.

Wankheimer Täle 1 forms the central uplink of the French Quarter as well as the buildings in Eugenstraße. During the work, there may be temporary internet outages there.

Our team will start on Sunday, 30 November 2025, at around 10 a.m. and will work its way from building to building. Anyone who would like to have a look at our network technology is warmly invited to stop by.
We will update this blog post regularly throughout the day.

Update, Saturday 6 p.m.: We will only start installation work tomorrow at 12 o’clock.

Update Sunday 1 p.m.: we are starting in Wankerheimer Täle 1

Update Sunday 5:20 p.m.: Provenceweg 1 and Landkutschersweg 4+6 are pretty much finished.

There will still be a short outage of the entire buildings when we switch the fiber connection from 1 to 10 gigabit.

Update Sunday 7 p.m.: The switch to 10 gigabit could not take place due to excessive attenuation on the fiber. The outage lasted 1.5 hours, longer than expected, because diagnostics and rollback were necessary.

Update 16.12.2025: Using new fiber patch cables, we will try to optimize the attenuation on our connection between Franz-Viertel and our server room in Fichtenweg this evening. There will be a few very short outages in Franz-Viertel and Eugenstraße.

2025-10-09 Reutlingen Pestalozzistr. 67

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A switch that is serving 24 rooms died today.

Instead of replacing the switch we will upgrade the house to gigabit.

We will be there tonight.

Update

9:30 PM – We are done and everything should be working normally again. If there are any issues still, let us know via the contact form.

Gigabit? Well… (Update from September 15, 2025)

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Almost two years ago I posted some numbers about how many people in our student housing actually use gigabit-capable devices. Today I checked again – and honestly, it’s not the big breakthrough yet:

Location Dec 2023 Sep 2025 Change
Geislingen 25 % 35 % +10
Albstadt 53 % 48 % −5
Sigmaringen 33 % 26 % −7

Geislingen improved a lot, Albstadt dropped a little but is still on top, and Sigmaringen is now down to only 26 %. Hard to say if this is a real trend – the measurement happened during semester break, so the sample is smaller. But still, the direction is interesting.

Router returns: a sad story

We are also collecting routers that students left behind when moving out. The result? Not great: less than 5 % of these devices can even do 5 GHz Wi-Fi – and so they can’t handle gigabit properly.

Of course, if someone owns a good router, they don’t leave it behind. But still, it’s shocking how many people were using outdated hardware: old Fast Ethernet ports, no 5 GHz, weak Wi-Fi chips. No wonder the speeds suffer.

Conclusion

For us that means: more awareness needed! Either many students don’t know what their connection could really do – or maybe they just don’t need much internet at all. Apart from one building in Tübingen (we’re still waiting for the key), we’ve already put up our own posters in all 102 student housing buildings. Let’s see if that helps.

Small Recycling Project – September 2025

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Some of you are kind enough to leave your router behind when you move out, so other students in the dorm can use it. Of course, these are not always the newest devices – sometimes we even find very old ones.

To keep things organised, we started collecting the leftover routers together with the caretakers here in Tübingen at Fichtenweg. By now, about 25 devices have been gathered. Anything that does not support modern Wi-Fi or current encryption standards is sorted out.

The working devices are passed on – together with a matching network cable – to the “WHO Dorfrat”  (student dormitory council). They distribute them to people who only need simple internet access and for whom an older router is still good enough.

What matters to us is that you have really good and stable internet in the dorm. The internet connection in your room almost never fails – if you have problems, it is usually the router or its settings. Just contact us and we’ll show you how to set up your router correctly. You should basically have nearly 100% availability.

A big thank-you goes to the caretakers, who have been very active in collecting the routers!

 

Student Network Meeting 2025 in Košice – Our Review

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This year went better than last time: at least two of us went to the Student Network Meeting (SNT) – last year it was only one person. Out of 12 possible members that’s still improvable, but already progress.

The trip itself was a real challenge. From Tübingen to Košice it’s about 880 kilometers. With the long journey, it was not easy to combine with studying and other commitments.

International Encounters

What excites us again and again: the great openness among everyone. Around 100 people from four countries came – most of them volunteer to provide good internet in their dorms and because they enjoy technology. The Slovak student community has always been strongly represented. With their shorter travel this time, they even arrived more rested.

Besides familiar faces, you meet new people every year. It’s fascinating to see how many things we have in common – but also what differences exist in structures and conditions.

Large student networks like AGDSN or Selfnet joined with more than ten people each. It’s impressive that we in Tübingen manage to run a stable network with so few people. My respect also goes to a French colleague from Brest, who spent almost 24 hours traveling to get here!

Exchange and Discussions

At the SNT people talk openly about everything: technology, experiences with vendors, support issues, and which devices are really worth buying again. It’s always helpful to hear the practical experiences of others.

We also learned a lot – from small details like special security seals to handling club clothing in terms of non-profit rules. And we could confirm our decision to use MikroTik as access switches. With Wi-Fi technology, however, there seems to be no common opinion – so we continue testing different vendors ourselves.

Accommodation and Setting

We stayed in the dormitories of our hosts from the PC-Club in Jedlíkova 9. Most slept in affordable twin rooms, which were part of four-person units with shower and toilet.

And a big thank you: AGDSN and Selfnet were even able to act as sponsors this year thanks to clever management – that’s really great and helps the whole event a lot!

Outlook

For us it’s clear: at the latest next year we want to have uniform embroidered team clothing. It simply looks good, and everyone immediately knows which team we belong to.

The next SNT will take place very close to us – either in Stuttgart or Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe will celebrate its 30th anniversary, Stuttgart wants to present its new facilities. Maybe in two or three years we will even be ready to host an event again ourselves. We already managed it once in 2009 – so it’s about time!

Conclusion

The SNT 2025 in Košice was a great chance for us to stay in touch, learn new things, and look beyond our own horizon. Despite the long journey, it was absolutely worth it. We are already looking forward to seeing many familiar and new faces at next year’s meeting near us!

For more information about the Student Network Meeting, visit:
studentnetworks.eu/meetings/snt2025