Comment Switched Ethernet? (Score 2) 458
Why not implement a bandwidth cap that only is applied to traffic going OUT onto the internet from the dorms? And inside the dorms, have 100 Mb switched ethernet.
At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, each dorm port (serving 2 computers) has a maximum bandwidth usage of 500 MB/day. That isn't so bad except that the network admins will switch off your port the next day if you go over that limit, and the limit applies to traffic going ANYWHERE, including to the room next door! Also, there is no way to tell how far you are into that 500 megs.
Frankly, the top reason why most people have gone over (and I know at least 30 people who have been shut off), is not something like Napster--it's sending a few hundred megs down the hall to burn a CD (or someone downloading a gig worth of stuff from their local network Windows file share). And the other common reason is that the school gives out hubs to people with multiple computers, so even traffic inside the room gets counted in that 500 Mb/day limit!
Most students hate this policy, especially engineers who have 2-3 computers in their room. The main reason seems to be that people are getting their ports shut off by the overly strict enforcement of a bandwidth policy (send 501 megs, and your port is off the next day) which is undoubtably intended to catch people running giant public warez servers.
I believe that the network admins would have far fewer headaches and the students would be far happier if only outgoing traffic to the internet was limited (and it could even be a stricter limit than 500 MB/day), as this is the major cost to the university--internal bandwidth is basically free once the lines are installed.
At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, each dorm port (serving 2 computers) has a maximum bandwidth usage of 500 MB/day. That isn't so bad except that the network admins will switch off your port the next day if you go over that limit, and the limit applies to traffic going ANYWHERE, including to the room next door! Also, there is no way to tell how far you are into that 500 megs.
Frankly, the top reason why most people have gone over (and I know at least 30 people who have been shut off), is not something like Napster--it's sending a few hundred megs down the hall to burn a CD (or someone downloading a gig worth of stuff from their local network Windows file share). And the other common reason is that the school gives out hubs to people with multiple computers, so even traffic inside the room gets counted in that 500 Mb/day limit!
Most students hate this policy, especially engineers who have 2-3 computers in their room. The main reason seems to be that people are getting their ports shut off by the overly strict enforcement of a bandwidth policy (send 501 megs, and your port is off the next day) which is undoubtably intended to catch people running giant public warez servers.
I believe that the network admins would have far fewer headaches and the students would be far happier if only outgoing traffic to the internet was limited (and it could even be a stricter limit than 500 MB/day), as this is the major cost to the university--internal bandwidth is basically free once the lines are installed.
