Students living in University Housing have reported noticing significant slowdowns in popular computer file sharing programs. These programs, which allow users to transfer music, video and other files now face restrictions from the university aimed at minimizing the programs' impact on UW-Madison network resources.
The area of the network affected specifically is the ResNet system, which includes the access of students living in residence halls.
'Bandwidth is the capacity of the network you have access to. ... It is kind of like the pipeline between where you are and where the content you want access to is,' said Brian Rust, Division of Information Technology communications manager.
In the past, ResNet has not had caps on the amount of bandwidth; however, with Napster and similar programs, some sort of regulation was needed.
Perry Brunelli, DoIT director of computer services, said with a boom in Napster use last year, ResNet's infrastructure was increasingly taxed.
'With Napster, [ResNet] was using 75 percent of all the university's outbound bandwidth,' he said.
Since University Housing pays for a specific amount of bandwidth, a way to keep its usage close to this limit was needed.
'It is possible for, say, 5 percent of [students] to be using 70 percent of the bandwidth even though [all students] have the same connection in their dorm room,' Rust said.
Paul Evans, director of University Housing, said individuals who use an 'extraordinary amount' of bandwidth can affect all UW-Madison students.
UW-Madison is now utilizing a program from a company called Packeteer, which, according to its Web site, controls 'less urgent' material by relegating it to a smaller area of available bandwidth.
Packeteer does not target all Web access, only file-sharing programs.
'If you wanted to check things on the Internet and you wanted to send e-mails and stuff like that, [it] would be extraordinarily fast,' Evans said. 'But if you wanted to download video it would still be able to happen'we wouldn't say no'it just may be slower.'
Some students said they were frustrated with how university officials handled the situation.
Brandon Resch, a UW-Madison student, said he noticed the slowdown on Oct. 11, and after researching the situation the following weekend, discovered the problem.
'I came to the conclusion that the school is throttling the bandwidth [for file sharing],' he said. 'Since the limit, I have not noticed any increase in speeds of everything else, so what has this accomplished'?
Dan Repp, a UW-Madison student, said he also disagreed with the university's limits.
'The service ... is included in my housing bill. ... I feel I should be free to download what I choose without being limited,' he said. 'I can't imagine that Ameritech or Charter Cable limits the download speed of only some content to their paying customers.'
