SGA promises faster internet

     Students plagued by super slow internet speeds in the residence halls can look forward to faster loading times. SGA submitted a proposal to increase campus bandwidth. It was approved by the Student Technology Fee Advising Group (STFG) on Nov. 9.
     Dr. Dorothy Leland reviews submitted proposals on Nov. 30 determining which actions pass for the good of the university. Left over technology fees from last year will pay for the sustained bandwidth increase through this June if the proposal passes.
     Slow internet speeds have made this semester difficult for students trying to complete homework assignments and social networking.
    “We were getting five to 10 complaints daily that the internet was so slow. It was taking three minutes to load Facebook,”  said Ryan Greene, SGA president.
    GCSU residence halls struggled with the snail like pace of its network that has averaged around a 10 Mb/sec connection since September. The month before the speed jumped as high as 68 Mb/sec.
     The bandwidth is allocated by a statewide collaborative network known as Peachnet.
     Towards the end of the summer fiber optic cables were installed to reconfigure our network setup. Peachnet left unregulated settings on this equipment giving users blazing speeds we were not paying for.
     “Students arrived in August and they thought we had the best bandwidth in the world,” said Ed Boyd, assistant chief information officer.
     Once our ISP noticed the issue, they bumped the campus back down to the contracted speed. This left tech dependent students on the residence hall network helpless as simple Mycats and other Internet tasks took forever to complete.
     “It was very slow,”  said Richard Brown, a Village at West Campus resident and SGA senator. “It is not enjoyable trying to do homework and having to wait forever for a page to load.”
      The Information Technology department, along with SGA, hope speeds will average about 40 Mb/sec after Peachnet receives the extra money. This higher bandwidth should take care of Internet issues around the GCSU residence hall network.
     While the approval of the current proposal would take care of this physical year through June 30, revisions for next year’s technology fees are a possibility.
      “This year it was approved by the Mandatory Fee Committee that the technology fee increase five dollars,” Greene said. “Two dollars would go towards a permanent increase with three dollars for multimedia classrooms.”
     Brown said a few extra dollars are necessary for students to enjoy a better Internet.
     All monetary provisions at GCSU must make it through a chain of command ending with the final approval from the Board of Regents.
     Boyd said students should notice some partial relief before the end of the semester.
     In the mean time Boyd suggests a few tips to take some strain off computers.
     “Monitor your activities and don’t install software that you don’t know how to configure,” Boyd said. “Sharing software sets you up as a default server allowing people to take away your computing power.”
     Viruses and worms infiltrate systems through these programs as well.
     Contact SGA members for additional information or to speak about issues affecting your GCSU experience.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 30 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry