Attempts to maintain wireless access increases

University of Mississippi officials are working to ensure that the quality of on-campus Internet access keeps 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, an Ole Miss freshman from Orlando, said he believes the service should be better because of his out-of-state tuition.

“I pay so much already because I’m out of state ­— they better give me some good Internet,” Fakess said.

Will Reynolds, a freshman from Springfield, Mo., also said he was unhappy with 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,” Reynolds said.

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,” Gates said.

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

Robin Miller, deputy chief information officer and director of technical services, said 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 LimeWire or something like that,” Miller said.

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; in fact, they may not even know that something is on their device that’s doing that,” Miller said.

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 updated to prevent viruses and spyware from slowing down the connection.  

They also suggested users to contact the Helpdesk at 662-915-5222 if they have problems with services like Blackboard.