File sharing in the dorms causes slow connections

By Laura Rico
Daily Bruin Contributor

Slow Internet connection speeds in the residence halls have
some students concerned about the effects of popular file sharing
programs on congested networks.

Campus Telecommunications Services, which provides Internet
access to dorm residents, reported a 40 percent increase in
residential use of commodity Internet sites between June and
September, though the number of users increased by only 10
percent.

Milton Wu, a second-year computer science and engineering
student who lives in Sproul Hall, blames slow speeds on busy
Internet commodity sites such as Napster and Scour Exchange, which
allow students to download and exchange music and videos.

“One of the main reasons for the lagging connection is the
ever-so-popular computer-to-computer programs that everyone seems
to be running,” Wu said.

According to Michael Schilling, director of Business and
Financial Services for the Information and Technology Group, recent
lawsuits against Napster have made more students aware of file
sharing sites.

Currently, eight U.S. college campuses, including UC San Diego,
have banned Napster from their networks, Schilling said. He said
UCLA is unlikely to ban Napster use on its network.

“We just provide internet access to students,” he
said. “We are not here to restrict access or enforce any
rules for Internet use.”

In July, the U.S. district court in San Francisco ordered
Napster to stop users from trading copyrighted material, but an
appellate court has postponed putting the decision into effect
until a new hearing is held later this month.

Schilling said the university would block the site if the courts
rule against Napster.

Currently, Internet access is provided to residents through
bandwidth cable, which is divided equally over the number of
clients active on the residential network.

CTS provides two forms of bandwidth. One serves commodity
Internet sites, or commercial sites. The other serves the UC system
and sites from other universities.

Access to these sites is shaped within the housing program to
meet the available campus bandwidth. Bandwidth refers to the amount
of data that can be transferred through a network.

Forty percent of residential traffic on the commodity bandwidth
is Napster- or Scour-related, according to CTS.

During busy daytime hours, a total 17 megabytes of traffic are
allowed on the bandwidth. The busiest hours for commodity access
are from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. A total of 100 megabytes of traffic are
allowed for UCLA, UC and external college sites, at any given
time.

Paul Huang, a second-year computer science and engineering
student who lives in Sproul, said he conducted bandwidth tests in
several halls and found the Internet connection is significantly
slower than last year’s.

“I have been conducting tests about three times a day for
four weeks now, and it seems that last year the network speed ran
three to four times faster than it currently does,” Huang
said.

Currently, bandwidth is paid for by Bruin Online, and is
subsidized by the Student Technology Center and telephone bill
revenues. Schilling said the university may look into buying
additional bandwidth, but student fees would have to increase by
$40 per student to fund it.

“Housing administrators, as well as the on-campus student
government, would have to discuss the pros and cons of buying
additional bandwidth,” he said.

The STC is also trying to see if traffic can be moved from cable
to cable.

Schilling said if students did not download any MP3s or music
videos, then both components of the bandwidth would run at about
the same speed.

Currently, enough bandwidth is available for all 7,200 on-campus
residents to download two or three songs a day.