Capped bandwidth in college dorms

[SaintAshlar]

Here, in the UCLA Res Halls, our internet bandwidth is throttled and we can't do much other than using the web and file sharing within the network. This only started happening this year and their official position is that its to help curb all the network slowdown caused by the worms/virii spreading around earlier in the fall/late summer (i.e. Nimda, etc.). This sucks.

I want mp3s, movies, and stuff!!!

I was under the impression that we were agreeing to pay for high speed internet access when we signed our UCLA housing residance contracts. I don't think such practices are particularly fair. I had the opportunity of living elsewhere, but I chose to stay in the dorms almost solely for the connection speeds. Then UCLA Network Services pulls this garbage. I'm paying about $3000 a quarter to live in this roach-trap. That's $1000 a month for 9 months. Shouldn't I be getting better service?

Anybody else have similar experiences? Any way to resolve this? I'm pretty sure this isn't a UCLA-exclusive phenomenon.

Those rat bastards.

:|

 

[axelfox]

9000 a year for dorms?! Daaaaannng.

I pay half that, but I still get connection slowdowns...I got around it though, heh hehe.

 

[MeanMeosh]

when i was in the dorms at UT Austin, i paid 6 bux a month for multiple OC12 pipes. however, we had a total of only 4 gigs total ul/dl per week . and now i'm in an apartment with cable......

 

[Logix]

They've capped UC Berkeley too. This place become slower than a 56K modem in the evenings. The entire campus is capped at 40Mbps, which is a lot better than it's been in the past. They also limit how many gigabytes you can download per week. Two standard deviations above the mean usage. Lately, that's been about 8GB/week. Here's the history of our cap:

In 1999, CNS noticed that traffic to and from the residence halls was skyrocketing. Because CNS pays for the Internet connection and they are billed by how much data moves through their pipe, their Internet bill was also skyrocketing. The residence halls were using a steady 20-25 Mbps with peak periods of 70 Mbps.

Why did bandwidth use skyrocket? Napster, pretty much.

So, in February 2000, they implemented the bandwidth cap, at 10 Mbps. It was later raised to 15 Mbps when it was realized that was too steep a limit. By Fall 2000, RSSP (our parent department) and ResComp negotiated with CNS and got them to raise the cap to 30 Mbps. In return, we compensated them for their Internet bills. Since CNS is funded by the University budget and RSSP and ResComp are funded by residence housing fees, they required that we help foot the bill. So we did.

 

[VirusDub]

Which hall are you in? I'm in DeNeve and have no complaints. They've capped things like AG and Morpheus, but it's not like those are the only ways to download mp3s and movies. Just use IRC if you need things so badly.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Why does everyone always use the same message "Rating" as the author does?

 

[Logix]

Because I am :|. And it's easier than changing it.

 

[dionx]

capped at UC Irvine too. i get better downloads now that i live offcampus. its even better since im in a neighborhood where its mostly adults and not college students, so the cable isnt being hogged at all.

 

[UofI]

No caps here at the Univ of Idaho. Do you get bad pings? Just download stuff of the network in the dorms.

 

[Rickten]

I think all the uc schools started capping this year. Now that I live in an apartment that offers a T1 solution I realize how much internet can cost. I pay 35 bucks a month for internet. The land lady is constantly telling me that I use too much bandwidth and that I need to stop downloading. I read my internet contract which looks like it was written by a 8th grader on a cocktail napkin based on the sentence structure and no where does it mention I am limited to what I can use my internet for. It doens't even say that programs such as Napster or Morpheus are prohibited. Lucky for me I guess they haven't figured out how to limit throttle down my IP address because I'm still blazing away. Unfortunately though my land lady kinda dislikes me.


<----------needs good job to support dedicated T1 to my home. Hopefully ten years from now this kind of solution will be practicall.

 

[ArmenK]

Hey, this is not a new problem at UCLA. It was this way all of last year. Upload and download speed were capped, uploads being impossible. This year i can upload around 70Kbps sometimes which is alot better than last year. As for downloads.... download accelerator helps alot for files off of web pages. For mp3s and stuff, try aimster and download from people with low ping, works pretty good. BTW, im in saxon, was in courtside last year.

 

[UofI]

I feel bad for you guys :Q Im downloading at min. of 900kps all the time

 

[CanOWorms]

Extremely fast connection here (both upload & download), but I think uploads are capped at 500mb a day. If you go over 500mb you're put onto a separate line until the end of the day.

 

[LivinLaVivaPollo]

It's not bad over here at UCSC. The best speeds I got were 6 megabits up and down, but usually it hovers around 2 megabits for download and 4 megabits for upload. There are slowdowns at night, but it's not too bad. Ping times are decent. We are capped to 1 gig upload per day, but unlimited download. Morpheus is freakin slow, but AG works just fine. Enough about the net, FINALS ARE COMING UP!!! :|

 

[AUMM]

yeaaa, here at UCI they capped it towards the end of summer, now i only get like 2-3 kb/s it reallllllllllly sux

 

[VirusDub]

When downloading off IRC, http, or ftp, I can get up to about 450 K/sec total. With people on the network, I get over 1.5 MB/sec. As far as I can tell, there's been no limit on total traffic. I've downloaded 4 gigs in a day, and over 20 gigs in a week. I don't know about you, but that's plenty.

 

[BatmanNate]

Cry me a river.






<------ Poor sap stuck on dialup.

 

[spp]

hahah..... that's why people stop living in dorms and have dsl ...

 

[SaintAshlar]

Last year, our uploads were god-awful if it wasn't being sent somewhere in the WAN. It's kinda odd, because this year I can pull off around 70 k/sec uploads (excluding within the network).

I haven't tried Aimster... I'll give that a shot. Blubster isn't bad... it's a bit finicky sometimes. I hate using IRC for getting files. I know a couple of people who use it and it seems time consuming and not very convenient.

I guess I'm just pissed because I expect a service when I pay for it. They provide me with the barebones stripped down version of what I feel that I should be getting. $1000 a month is a rape when you can't even get porn at a decent rate

 

[sinunbeso]

Here I go to York U in Toronto. We get access in residence for free so you all can imagine how slow it is. Last year they charged us for connection so it was better. In our school there is no restriction on the usage of the access. But somebody got warned for setting up decicated napster servers on the network. Yep Morpheus is slow as hell but as long as I get free stuff out of it I have no complains.

 

[Uclagamer_99]

ucla has been that way because when napster came out around 2-3 years people would hog all the bandwidth and never stop downloading off the network...which inevitably led to the system going down several times my freshman year in the dorms
that is also why the dorm rates are rising...students leave their computers on all night even when not downloading...thus they put in an extra electricity fee this year just to counteract that (power crisis and all in California)


at least when they cap your bandwidth the network goes down a lot less often

i remember the network was down for almost two weeks freshman year...i don't know how i survived

 

[sinunbeso]

And some kids in my residence use the network solely for ICQ. Get a life:|.

 

[shopbruin]

i live in sunset. i don't care.

it'll be fixed in january geez! they're upgrading to internet2!

its 9th week! go read a book! finals are in less than two weeks!

if you were in the apt you'd have to pay EXTRA on top of your rent for dsl! whine whine whine!

(can you tell i'm tired of people whining about the network? morpheus doesn't work.. find other ways to download....)

 

[VirusDub]

<< it'll be fixed in january geez! they're upgrading to internet2! its 9th week! go read a book! finals are in less than two weeks! whine whine whine! (can you tell i'm tired of people whining about the network? morpheus doesn't work.. find other ways to download....) >>

Damn straight. Besides, you're not paying $9000 to be able to pirate music/movies/pr0n.

And stop bitching about Morpheus while not bothering to try other things (read: IRC).

 

[Jarwa]

<< Cry me a river.






<------ Poor sap stuck on dialup. >>

I second that!!!!!!