Internet speed

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-chief

Anyone who has been on the Monmouth College campus for any length of time knows the state of Internet connection around here is not the best.

Downloading that “must-see” episode of “Desperate Housewives” on iTunes takes nearly as long as a marathon of the entire season of the show. Playing your favorite online game is a strange experience because you get to the point where a world loads, and the game lags. Suddenly, the game re-starts and you’re fighting a giant monster. You die shortly afterward.

Well, the Monmouth College Information Systems Office may have helped to remedy the problems students have experienced with Internet connectivity as personal computers have become more prevalent in the dorms in recent years.

According the Daryl Carr, executive director of information systems, the college is planning some major upgrades in Internet connectivity campus-wide this semester. Prior to the upgrade, Monmouth College had four T1 connections, providing a total of 6Mb of connectivity. The college was also connected to the Illinois Central Network (ICN), which was highly expensive to maintain.

When connected to the ICN, the college was paying approximately $15,000 for each 1.5Mb, leaving the total cost at $60,000 for Internet connectivity. The new connection, the name of which Carr did not specify, will cost slightly less per Mb, bringing the total costs to around the same as before, but with more power.

The upgrade will increase bandwidth for the campus to 10Mb, of which 4Mb will be given to the computer labs and classrooms, and 6Mb will go to the residence halls. Carr also said, as a result of the upgrades, more bandwidth will be able to be shifted to the residence halls in the late evenings, when computer labs and classrooms are more empty.
Carr said the college decided it needed to conduct this upgrade because, “The Internet is providing more interactive content. Much of that content is audio and video. This requires more bandwidth.”

As a result of the upgrade, voice services such as GoogleTalk and Skype may run more efficiently due to faster streaming, but “the increased usage will also impact the performance,” Carr said.

Students and faculty who have complained that the e-mail spam filters seem to have been loosened this year may not have any relief from the college. Carr said the college’s e-mail filters are constantly updated, but “spammers are getting more sophisticated at creating e-mail that is not easily distinguished from valid e-mail. We identify and remove more than 80,000 e-mails each day. This is a world-wide problem and it affects every educational institution and business that is connected to the Internet.”

While there may be no way to protect students from increased spam short of telling them to be wary in signing up for e-mail lists on websites, the upgrades in progress by the Information Systems Office may help students learn more effectively, and will increase abilities to surf the Internet.

With bandwidth in the residence halls being increased to 6Mb, with more shifting over later at night, downloading that episode of “Desperate Housewives” may take a much shorter amount of time. And, the next time you play that online role-playing game, you may have fair warning before you have to fight that monster.