<< I have to write them a fat check every month. As a tenant and a subscriber to their SERVICE, I should expect certain things. Just because we're feisty college kids, we're not entitled to the same rights as, say, someone living in an apartment who's subscribed to DSL? I'd say that was age discrimination.
Their terms clearly allow me to use the internet for "incidental personal purposes", so I'm pretty sure my griping is warranted. >>
Actually, as a former college student and RES.net program employee, I kinda know something about this.
First-off you say you pay $xxx to live in the Dorm. If you're going to stake the claim that you are owed something as a "subscriber" you first need to make sure that you REALLY ARE a subscriber at all. At my school, RES.net services were purposely offered for free for two reasons--to silence people like you who may think they are "owed" something, and so that we can easily boot offenders from the program without them claiming they have rights as a subscriber.
Secondly, I haven't read every computing access agreement ever written, but I'm 99% sure yours says something to the tune of "RES.net is to be used for academic purposes only..." I don't doubt that there is a clause specifically allowing you to use it for non-academic purposes, but the fact of the matter is that if it is determined that the residential subnet is sapping the bandwidth of the academic subnet, the residential subnet is GOING to be throttled, and there's nothing you can do about it because even if you really ARE a paying subscriber, since when does your "rights" as a greedy brat supercede an ENTIRE UNIVERSITY'S rights as a an educational enterprise?
Furthermore, since when does your "rights" as a greedy brat supercede the rights of everyone else who may be sharing the bandwitdh on your subnet?
'nuff said.
Thirdly, your argument that a broadband subscriber living in his own apartment is false. Last time I checked, as a PAYING cable subscriber, my speeds are capped at FAR less than the bandwidth could theoretically bear, and that network exists solely for recreational purposes. But again, since it's shared bandwidth, what right do I as a greedy brat have to sap the speed of everyone else in my building simply because I think I have some god-given right to monopolize the resource?
Bob970, at least offers a suggestion instead of just saying "GIMME GIMME GIMME!:
<< there should be separate options then for internet use.... like a paying option to get to use full potential... or at least something semi highspeed, or just the plain ole accademic >>
This is a good idea, and if you can devise a cheap, easy way to allocate bandwidth on a per-host basis, I am ALL EARS! This task is far easier said than done. Simply keeping track of the database of users who opted for the "high-bandwidth" service would be a pain, but seeing as most RES.net programs are running DHCP and don't provide nameservice with fixed hostnames, about the only way to track you would be by your MAC address. Assuming we can compile a database that links users to MAC addresses (because we can--I've done it), now we just have to come up with a way to only allocate that much bandwidth to those MACs.....
Short of manually plugging those devices into switches on a separate subnet, which would make the idea pretty cost-ineffective, we'd need to find some way to automate the process.....
And if you could do it, now you run into the problem that customers paying for xxxMBps will be peeved if they don't get it, which is a whole other can of worms.
No easy task, sorry.