Campus Bandwidth

[Matt Osmoe]

The Cougar Village connection speed is ussually less than 56k. I heard that all of cougar village is feeding off of one line that can carry less bandwidth than the lines they send to the dorms. I also heard that they are limiting bandwidth now. Is any of this true and can we expect bandwidth to improve anytime in the near future. Also, how is the bandwidth in BH? Thanks. Osmoe.

[Stiffler]

There use to be a website up on the SIUE homepage that displayed what all the network connections were. Three years ago the page said that the lines to CV were XDSL Lines. There are three Fibre lines to Woodland and three to Prarie Halls. EB and Bluff weren't on the map back then, but I do know they are on the same line to OIT. (Bluff goes to EB, and EB goes to OIT.) They are supposed to be fast, but if you read one of my earlier post today, I mentioned that Nimbda is still making the rounds here, slowing up the network.

Jon

[Chris Swingler]

Y'know, there are Universal email addresses.  I'm not sure if we are authorized to use them, but here they are:

Bluff_Hall@siue.edu
Prarie_Hall@siue.edu
Woodland_Hall@siue.edu

Do you think a public service announcement telling people to install a virus scanner would help?

I'm sure saying "doing this one easy thing and telling your friends to do the same could increase our bandwidth throughout the entire network" would perk up a few ears.  

--Beanie

[Peter Motyka]

I would imagine those mass email addresses are filtered in some way.  If not, people could spam the heck out of our campus population.   As far as rate limiting the bandwidth of dorms, I am all for it.  I have been annoyed with the horrible internet speed on campus for the last few years and am happy they are finally capping off greedy internet users who are endlessly downloading.  It is one thing to download an iso here and there, but excessive filesharing is a nuisance.  Perhaps I will finally be able to conduct research on the internet while working in the EB, rather than staring at a unresponsive progress meter.  OIT would not have to resort to such strict usage policies if campus internet users had any clue about fair usage of bandwidth.

Peter

[Chris Swingler]

I agree wholeheartedly.  I really have no desire to download anything absolutely humongus (other than the occasional Linux or FreeDOS .iso).  Though I would like to be able to download linux distros and not have to wait two weeks for the download...

Maybe we could just cap/restrict access to certain FTP servers, and kill the ports that common P2P servers (like Kazaa and Morpheus) use.

(I'm pretty certain I didn't make any friends with this post...:-D)

--Beanie

[Matt Osmoe]

I would sacrifice p2p for a faster connection, but problems would arise in getting the latest release of (your beloved distro name here). That, and I am sure that a few clever individuals would find ways around port blocks. All the same, something needs to be done. I will have to leave fixing the ominous bandwidth problem up to a smarter person than I, but if we are paying for a "fast internet connection," we should get one.

[Stiffler]

They way P2P clients work: If person A is behind a firewall and Person B is not, then they both can connect to each other and share files. However, If Person A and B are both behind firewalls, then they cannot share files.

Jon

[William Grim]

Hmm, I would still think some sort of firewall would work.

I believe a deny all traffic UDP/TCP would work, with only a few ports open.

Let's not push them to this one.

[Matt Osmoe]

True. I would rather some "geek friendly" alternative be enacted than restrictions.

They cut off ports at Blackburn in Carlinville, but people just started to use stuff like socks2http.

well, i can still LAN game well enough, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Later. osmoe.

[Fred Jones]

In my search for a better way to "ride the internet"
I was , it seems, shot down by the local cable company, Why, is my first question.My other thought is that if this stays like this to long im just going to do sneaker net from EB zip to Fred zip. that i think would be faster... I am very disapointed by the lack of bandwith.. let alone the "allowed options" That i am willing to pay for..either cable or DSL... my guess is even DSL is not allowed because of some crazy wiring FUPA.. with this silly wall jack that looks as old as the Peck bldg. I dont expect OC3 lines to each apartment on the CV side.. it would be nice... but my upload is faster than my download.. to me that is silly too...true i am use to DSL 128/768 when i lived in Cleveland. But this is just plain ugly. I understand the problems with these mp3 and fileshare stuff a little and agree things have to be done, but i am sure there are other ways than capping the line..if it is the school that is saying no to charter cable on the pipeline connection then it should say yes and offer it as a "Paid in Full" option when you signup for housing ie the whole semester or whole year. that way there are no problems with that end... .. alright ill stop the sob story... any ideas at all... would they allow PCDirect? prob. not because it involves a sat. dish outside and so on... geewiz... i really like the walk to school but....

well have fun

Fred

[Matt Osmoe]

rumors of new lines coming to cougar village from my news reporter roomate. I don't know if he was serious about it. I will find out and let you know. later. osmoe.

[Matt Osmoe]

Ok, here it is, hot off the press:

the deal is, all of the dorms have seperate fibrelinks to them. cougar village, however, has a dsl line running out to it.

the whole joint gets 12 mega bits free from the illinois education network. we purchased an additional 4 or 6 a few years ago to complement that 12, we are just using all of the bandwidth.
   - Travis Ross

What I get from that is CV is getting faster lines, but we are using all our bandwidth anyway. So how much faster the network will actually get, and how long this will take, I have no idea.

[Chris Swingler]

Well, I ran a CNET bandwidth test tonight.  (10/14/02, around 12am)  Out of two trials, I got an average downstream spped of 34.5 kilobits per second.  (I'm in Bluff, if you were wondering.)

That dialup 56K winmodem I have lying around is looking more tempting every day.

Well, something has to be done.  If not, can we at least have free local phone calls?

--Beanie

[Chris Swingler]

Duh!  It's on the second page.  Sorry about the doublepost.

[Stiffler]

Well, didn't you say that we had 400 kbits/sec before David Richey turned his computer on?

Jon