UD reconfigures network to meet growth in demand

If you've ever been to a big city at rush hour, you know the bottlenecks and delays caused by a large number of people trying to ride the escalator up from a subway station. Down on the platform, commuters stride purposefully and promptly until they reach the crush of foot-traffic near the exit: They stop, shuffle slowly and mill about as each individual tries to force his or her way onto the narrow escalator for the ride to the surface.

Similarly, excessive traffic on UD's computing network causes delays, particularly at the parts of the network where data exits the campus for the Internet or tries to enter the campus from the Internet.

Just as commuters look askance at anyone who prevents others from boarding the escalator, so UD's faculty, students and staff face inconvenience when a small number of people block network access for all campus users.

"Our campus network is one of the best in the country, but our network resources are finite," Dan Grim, Information Technologies (IT)-Network and Systems Services, said.

"In some ways, we are victims of our own success," he said. "Since everyone at the University relies on the network and, for the most part, takes its existence for granted, we find that some users, mostly students, assume that they may download anything they want--including full-length movies and full software packages--without affecting the network."

According to Grim, once students moved into the residence halls this semester, "Internet use went through the roof." He added that the University reacted immediately to increase capacity and to reconfigure the network to minimize delays.

"We are also informing students that their individual network use can affect the entire network," Betsy MacKenzie, IT-Help Center, said.

"We have sent e-mail to all resident students advising them what it means to be a 'good network citizen,' and we have reduced the speed of Internet access for students who use more than a reasonable amount of network resources.

At the University of Delaware, we think it imperative that students be free to take full advantage of the resources on the Internet," Susan Foster, Vice President of Information Technologies, said.

"To date, we have avoided placing the broad limits on student access to the Internet that many other institutions have imposed," she said

"Just placing limits on student use encourages students to find ways to circumvent those limits," Grim added.

"It is a much better long-range course of action to allow our students full access to the Internet and to educate them about the responsibilities that come with the privilege of such rich network access," Foster concluded.