On-Campus Internet Access

Powers Hall, which houses the Information Technology department.

University of Mississippi officials are working to make sure the quality of on-campus Internet access is keeping up with increases in enrollment and use of wireless devices.

Periods of slow Internet service are frustrating for some students who live on campus. Stewart Fakess, 18, believes the service should be better since he pays so much in out-of-state tuition.

"I pay so much already because I'm out of state, they better give me some good Internet," said the freshman from Orlando, Fla.

Will Reynolds, a freshman from Springfield, Mo., also had negative opinions of on-campus Internet access. "Some days it will be so slow that you can't get anything done. You can't even watch YouTube videos," said Reynolds, 19.

Kathy Gates, the university's Chief Information Officer, said there are several reasons for the speed issue, including increased enrollment, increased popularity of video websites such as YouTube and Netflix and more wireless devices in use on campus.

"We're finding that many students have up to four [wireless devices], and some have more than that," said Gates.

Gates also said the addition of Campus Walk to the university network caused further strain.

Robin Miller, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Director of Technical Services, explained that network administrators are also required by law and university policy to clamp down on students that may be using the network to download illegal files.

"That could mean that we have to press down a little bit on the bandwidth of what somebody might use for a LimeWire or something like that," said Miller.

In addition, Miller cited "bandwidth hogs" as a factor in the speed issue. "Bandwidth hogs" are users that consume large amounts of bandwidth, leaving the rest of the network with less bandwidth and, in turn, slower service.

"They may know it, or they may not know it. In fact, they may not even know that something is on their device that's doing that," said Miller.

In an effort to stop bandwidth hogs, the university instituted a "fair share policy" on its wireless network, in which all users are guaranteed a certain amount of bandwidth.

To combat the speed problem, university officials are employing several solutions, such as buying more bandwidth, increasing wireless capacity on campus and shifting network traffic between residence halls and classrooms and offices.

Miller said more bandwidth is dedicated to academic buildings and online services such as Blackboard during the day; at night, the bandwidth is returned to residence halls.

To help maximize connection speed, Gates and Miller suggested using an anti-virus program and keeping it up do date to prevent viruses and spyware from slowing down the connection, and for users to contact the Helpdesk at (662) 915-5222 if they have problems with services like Blackboard.