The information superhighway sometimes seems like it has traffic jams, especially on Fairfield’s campus.
Slow downloads, difficulty accessing services, and connection stability has plagued Fairfield’s connection for some time now.
Despite the hiccups, Fairfield has big plans for student access to the Internet. In the next two years, upgrades in campus connections will resolve current bottlenecks, making the information superhighway feel like they just converted the shoulder into a new lane.
HIGHER SPEED LIMITS
The school was spending approximately $47,500 per year for bandwidth for a 6 megabit connection. That speed is the equivalent of having 107 modems downloading information at the same time off the web, similar to what you use to connect to AOL.
The university, however, invested in a hefty upgrade to bandwidth, which in November increased the speed to 21 megabits, the equivalent of 375 modems. That brought an added cost of about $112,800, making the total cost run over $150,000 per year.
According to James Estrada, university librarian, this resulted in enough to cover the needs on campus. In an e-mail, he said that bandwidth use “is running about 60 percent of capacity. Our previous bandwidth utilization was bursting at about 95 percent at peak periods.” This means that there’s plenty of bandwidth available most times.
Some students noticed faster speeds. “I’ve noticed it hasn’t frozen up or given me problems recently,” said Allison Marshall ’04.
Jen Barrett ’04 said, “I think it’s been better than it has been overall.”
Others don’t agree. “It’s still pretty slow,” said Sarah Walker ’04.
Michael Rubin ’03, who has knowledge about the campus network, said, “Not at all. It’s absolutely too slow. For the speed of the line, it should be faster.”
THE DORM BOTTLENECK
While the bandwidth increase benefits academic buildings, a problem still exists with the way the dorms are connected. “Academic buildings are still on a 10 megabit shared connection,” Estrada said. The approximately 2500 students who live in the quad or townhouses are stuck at that speed, shared between all the students vs. 21 megabits. Students can’t make use of the added bandwidth without upgrades.
The school is resolving that by looking at ways to move away from the old shared connections, a process that will take a few months. In Estrada’s e-mail, he said, “the planning for the pilot program for upgrading the dorms is proceeding.” Estrada said the goal is to begin upgrades right after commencement and have much of it, if not all, done by the end of summer.
The bottleneck has caused some students discomfort as they try to download multimedia. Monica Regan ’04 said, “I have some trouble when I download music. But for [school] work and Campus Pipeline and stuff it’s good.”
Marshall said, “As far as downloading music or any kind of multimedia clips, it’s very slow. As far as clicking onto websites or surfing the net, it’s not bad.”
Rubin said, “For multitasking surfing, like when you’re trying to go through various web databases on your computer, it’s too slow.”
DOWNLOAD LIMITS
To try to control bandwidth usage, limits have been put into place. Experiments with throttling have been done, which provide more speed for academic labs during the day and dorms at night.
One control already in place is a limit on the number of computers that can connect to certain types of programs. For those trying to access KaZaA, IRC, and other popular computer programs for downloading, only 245 connections are offered, a fraction of the students that are on at peak hours.
Estrada said the goal is to provide students working on classwork to have the advantage. “While we aren’t blocking such programs as KaZaA, we do make judicious use of our bandwidth throttling capabilities so as to give priority to academic uses.”
He added, “It’s a good bet that off-peak hours such as late night and early morning would be best for trying to access KaZaA, for example.”
Another change to the system was the creation of Virtual Local Area Networks, or VLANs, which allow computers to be grouped in a way that can be micromanaged. Academic buildings are assigned to some, while students are assigned to others.
This has created problems, though. The system has caused students not to be able to see each other on the network anymore, limiting file sharing and online gaming.
Thanks to upgrades, the way we access the Internet is finally being improved. As the network improves, students may enjoy something they feel they’ve been paying for: a speedy connection to everything online.
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