Speed has tripled in two years

While living in the dorms last year, Tracy

Paar hated using the Internet.

“It’s really slow when everyone’s using it at

3 p.m. everyday,” the junior marketing major

said. “At 3 in the morning, it’s nice and fast,

but it sucks when everyone is using it.”

Paar said she was generally going on Web

Dorms’ Internet

speed tripled

in past two years

sites like Facebook

and YouTube, Web

sites that usually

take a longer time

to load.

Whi l e many

students, like Paar,

seem to think Kent

State’s Internet

is slow, Network

and Te l e c ommunication

Services

has actually

been increasing

the bandwidth,

or speed, of the

Internet.

“ W e ’ v e

increased it threefold

since June of

2007,” said Tom

Beitl, manager of

Network and Telecommuni

cat ion

Services. “So we’re

doing our bes t

to keep up with

demand.”

As of August

2009, Kent State’s

bandwidth is 850

MB per second,

which is equivalent

to downloading

about 26 full songs

per second. In June

of 2007 the bandwidth

was only

295 MB per second,

Beitl said, less than

half of the current

network speed.

Kent S t a t e ’ s

Internet Service

P r o v i d e r s a r e

OARnet and Time

Wa r n e r . Time

Warner provides

bandwidth for

the dorms, and

OARnet provides

bandwidth for the

rest of the campus.

How it works:

Beitl said Kent State’s network is like a

wheel. The core of the network is like the hub

of the wheel, and the spokes of the wheel are

the connections leading out to the rest of the

buildings on campus.

He said the internal network

is used for all communications

between Kent State buildings and

locally hosted Web sites like Flash-

Line and the Kent State e-mail system.

Connections such as these

never leave campus.

“Internally, the network on

campus is very robust,” Beitl said.

“It has a very large capacity.”

Philip Thomas, one of Kent

State’s network design engineers,

said it’s rare that all of the bandwidth

leading off campus to Web

sites, like Facebook and Twitter, is

used.

“On average here, most of the

time during the day and the evening,

you’re still only using about

60 percent of the bandwidth,”

Thomas said.

He said bandwidth usage

doesn’t usually go up, except during

certain times, such as when

Microsoft puts out a new patch

or a large class has to download

something.

“Let’s say everyone in the

world is downloading a new

movie, but you, as a student, are

working on a project and you

need to go to one of the servers

on campus, or somewhere else off

campus,” Thomas said. “We do

give priority to different aspects

of things to try to guarantee that

the work keeps going even though

people are doing other things.”

He said FlashLine and Banner

applications are considered critical

services, so even when the Internet

is slow, Kent State has tools in

place to manage critical data.