Since students began living on-campus at UWG, it is obvious that the internet connection in the dorm rooms are slowing down.

With all the new technology enhancements going on around UWG, it seems that the internet speed has suffered, especially in on-campus housing.

As Interim Director of Student Services, Blake Adams is in charge of the direction of most forward services such as the computer labs and classrooms.

“The dorms have a bandwidth of about 36 megabits. The average household has a bandwidth of three megabits,” said Adams.

According to Adams’s information, the average on-campus resident has much more bandwidth than the average household, but why is the connection slower?

In simpler terms, Adams explained that the internet is connected through a pipeline and because that pipeline is being used by so many people, it is slowing down the flow of the internet connection.

Fortunately for students, Information Technology Services and Residence Life are working together to help solve this problem.

“We are working to fund an expansion of the bandwidth we are now using in student housing, that way students can browse the web more freely,” sad Chief Information Officer Kathy Kral.

With the amount of time students devote on the internet, an upgrade like this is clearly one in which UWG needs too invest.

Kral also noted that they were planning on upgrading the myUWG e-mail portal over the fall break. With the current portal, students have a limited amount of e-mails that they can hold in their myUWG account.

“This upgrade will allow students to hold much more e-mails than they could previously,” said Kral.

With approximately 183 billion e-mails sent daily worldwide, e-mail is a massive market and will only grow as more of the world gains access to the internet. Knowing this piece of information toward this improvement is one to be valued across campus.

There are plenty of ways that computer owners can speed up their own computers and laptops. As an individual user, taking a look at where downloads are coming from can help. Downloading music and movies from illegitimate web sites, and using applications that constantly check the internet such as online gaming can significantly slow down a computer. Deleting programs that are no longer useful and updating anti-virus software are minor changes that can increase speed.
 

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9 comments

josie

Wed Oct 28 2009 04:30

the internet was faster last year... why is it so much slower now? its fast at 4 in the morning thats the only time i download anything

Chris

Tue Oct 27 2009 21:09

The Internet here is the worst in the country. What the heck is wrong with the IT people here?

James

Tue Oct 27 2009 15:48

When does UWG plan on doing something about the internet? I am very upset about the lack of concern I see from the school. The issue of this poor internet is impacting my grades since I have an online coarse. It is also making me frustrated and unable to complete assignments with 100% quality because I am ready to drive over 2 hours to get home and have an internet not the speed of a sloth betting on snail races.

Ellis

Thu Oct 8 2009 01:01

I'm the only one in the UCC right now using the internet, and my download speed is about 28 megabits per second, yet I just came from the Tyus dorm, where the internet is less than 1 megabit per second. Clearly there is something wrong with the dorms on campus. I think Residence Life should step up to the plate and fix this problem ASAP. Here is my speed test for the UCC at 1:00 a.m.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/586110795.png

UWG Student

Mon Oct 5 2009 11:58

As everyone else has said, the internet on campus is not acceptable. It is a problem when I am unable to complete school assignments because pages take excess of 5 minutes to load. At orientation Dr. Sethna kept mentioning how UWG was finally becoming the destination college we have all dreamed of. We have up-to-date facilities, a transit system, as well as a brand new stadium. I feel that the next step to becoming this "Destination College" is by improving our internet. This is not the stone age. Competent internet is not just a luxury so that we can check our facebook at a faster rate but is a necessity as a student to complete assignments in an efficient manner.

random resident

Sun Oct 4 2009 23:47

The internet here on campus during the week is unacceptable. If the school is looking to improve and become a "destination college" fixing this should be near the very top of the priorities.

As of right now at 11 pm I am unable to log into mymathlab.com and finish the last bit of homework I have. Now I am going to receive ~80% on it. This means this internet is effecting my grade and I am going to lose around 5 points on my test.

I hope this gets fixed very soon, or I will not live on campus next year. I am seriously considering going to another college just because of this issue that is affecting my major.

Ellis Smith

Fri Oct 2 2009 02:49

No, it's megabits, that's a networking term. And he's right, Emory gets like 70 megabits/second, while we get 0.1 megabits/second. It's not even funny how slow we are. It's not like the tortoise vs. hare, it's more like the tortoise vs.the dead slug.

Your name

Thu Oct 1 2009 20:03

I think he meant megabytes, not megabits... there's a huge difference...
~Ash

Tyus Resident

Thu Oct 1 2009 13:45

Uh, we don't have anywhere close to 36 megabits, even in the UCC or the TLC. In Tyus hall, we're pulling down about 0.1 megabits most of the day. If we can't even admit that there's a problem, how are you going to ever find a solution? Everybody on campus seems to know what's going on except the people in charge of fixing it.

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