College internet speeds

[QuikSilverMD]

So, I just moved in to campus, and my internet speeds in the dorm are aprox 370 kbps, whereas, in other computer labs, the speed is over 15 mbps...

I'm required to use Cisco Clean Access Agent, and I'm using a cat5e cord...

Anyone have a clue what the problem is? or how to speed up my internet?

Thanx in advance

 

[444]

They are probably purposely throttling you thanks to everybody filesharing. Most likely no way to speed up.

 

[Malk-a-mite]

Anyone have a clue what the problem is? or how to speed up my internet?

Place a call/email/trouble ticket with campus help desk and ask.

 

[QuikSilverMD]

Place a call/email/trouble ticket with campus help desk and ask.

I did... they say they have no idea why i'm getting a slow internet connection... and they say i might get a faster connection if i use wireless

 

[SCSI-Terminator]

I'm required to use Cisco Clean Access Agent

Theres your problem right there, sucks to haft to take a piss test everytime you want to use the internet doesn't it. I know before they patched it, it was bypassable by altering the User-Agent string of the web browser. I won't say any more thou because "How do I bypass/circumvent my school, work, or service provider's firewall/proxy/security?" is not an allowed topic on this board.

Oh and like 444 said, your being throttled, or can anyone else in the dorm reach the same download speeds has the lab? It may also be unintentional because they deploy all the older, slower and outdated network gear in the dorms.

 

[MooCow]

Almost every school throttles or restricts the shit out of your internet connection. Its no surprise. I'd do the same shit if I were the network admin. No way I'm gonna run around and find who's using all the bandwidth or some other dumbass downloading off noob sources like kazaa and limewire and spreading a virus through the network.

 

[WesM63]

SCSI-Terminator,
Agreed.

MooCow,
Agreed.

Its hard enough finding a user beating the hell out of a network in a 50 user enviroment. I would hate to have to find said user in a 10,000+ user enviroment.

 

[brom42]

Almost every school throttles or restricts the shit out of your internet connection. Its no surprise. I'd do the same shit if I were the network admin. No way I'm gonna run around and find who's using all the bandwidth or some other dumbass downloading off noob sources like kazaa and limewire and spreading a virus through the network.

Exactly. I am a network admin at a school. We restrict the crap out of everything that is not school related. We have a crap connection for how many users we have, so everything that doesn't relate to school work is restricted to the minimum that is required. Anything that causes excessive network traffic like P2P get blocked completely.

We are here to provide the students with an education, not give them a connection to play games or file share on. Oh and by the way, we lie to the students about why some things are slow. The other day someone complained about how sites like addicting games and you tube are slow. I blamed the web site, not the fact that we restict peoples connection to those site to 56K. Or that iTunes is restricted to 36K.

**runs to server room and hugs the packet shaper**

 

[icthus13]

We are here to provide the students with an education, not give them a connection to play games or file share on.

On topic: OP, do you have your speed and duplex settings right?


When I lived on campus, my school treated us like they were a normal ISP, except we couldn't file share. They had some program that scanned for open network ports and turned off your port if you were filesharing. Dang thing was fast at it, too

Other than that, I got to take full advantage of the OC3 we had in that dorm....it pays to live in the new buildings!

 

[MooCow]

You guys may agree, however I wouldn't restrict too much on the LAN side of things. I would still let students game, and possibly share files over the network somehow. Yet the legality of file sharing regardless if outside or inside the network is a grey area.

Back at my school, some kids ran a direct connect hub, it was great, from site to site miles away, it was about 500-800kbps cause they were probably running some really old 10baseT equipment but it was still relatively fast compared to doing it over the internet. Unfortunatly admins caught on after a couple years and it was shut down.

 

[QuikSilverMD]

Oh and like 444 said, your being throttled, or can anyone else in the dorm reach the same download speeds has the lab? It may also be unintentional because they deploy all the older, slower and outdated network gear in the dorms.

...Damn... You must be right, because, I also checked the speeds in the computer lab in my dorm... same as in my room...

But, in the event that it is not the "older, slower and outdated network gear" that is limiting my speeds... you think that there is a chance that if I do try to bypass the Cisco agent, I could increase my speeds? or would that be a waste of time? (no, i'm not asking you how to do this... but merely if it would help...)

 

[swatbat]

you think that there is a chance that if I do try to bypass the Cisco agent, I could increase my speeds? or would that be a waste of time? (no, i'm not asking you how to do this... but merely if it would help...)

No you don't want to do that. Last thing you want is to get busted doing something stupid and getting in trouble.

Around here(VCU) I pull a couple hundred k easy off the wireless. I figure you have 30 or 40 students off each access point easy so I don't expect much. Haven't bothered trying off a hardwired machine yet(or hooking mine into the network) as I don't really care. I've gotten in too much trouble in the past(hs) for doing that shit. Remember schools tend to block a lot of thing and the other stuff is prob just how it is connected. With your dorm they may not be blocking it but they may just have a 100 meg pipe going into it that a few hundred kids are using.

I should note though that VCU seems to be blocking RDP which really sucks. I was sitting here between class and was hoping to do some of my billing(I work for consultants) but I cant remote into our server to do it. Tried remoting to my home machine to make sure and it was a no go. What I really don't like about this is if I forget like a paper or something at home and don't have it on my notebook I can't remote into my desktop to get it. O well I guess I need to get my FTP stuff back working so I can get in that way. Funny thing is that I think the school supports SSH. May just need to run a ssh tunnell in and run RDP through it

 

[SCSI-Terminator]

...Damn... You must be right, because, I also checked the speeds in the computer lab in my dorm... same as in my room...

But, in the event that it is not the "older, slower and outdated network gear" that is limiting my speeds... you think that there is a chance that if I do try to bypass the Cisco agent, I could increase my speeds? or would that be a waste of time? (no, i'm not asking you how to do this... but merely if it would help...)

I should probably rephrase that "older slower network gear" term. What I ment is that the connection to your dorm is probably being oversubscribed, and your also fighting all the other students who are downloading games, videos, music, porn or what have you that you wouldn't have in the main lab. Also the "upgrade the network" budget probably has more dollars being spent on the main lab (which benifits all) rather than than a dorm which just benifits the residents who live there.

I don't think the CCA program is slowing you down (at least not directly), thats not its purpose. Like swatbat said, don't try to get around it, the risk of being perminatly banned or worse is not worth it. I only point it out because I don't believe that univerities should dictate how the students chose to maintain their personal computers. A reverse firewall or cascaded firewall system with ResNet in the middle should be enough security to let these sys admins sleep at night knowing that there core network is secure. And I'll stop here because after this point it would just be a rant about personal freedom, and I don't think we want to go there.

Also, because I'm currious, how do they deal with Mac or BeOS, Linux users, or things like game consoles and other internet devices?

 

[KompressorV12]

We are here to provide the students with an education, not give them a connection to play games or file share on.

Words can't describe how much I disagree with this statement for college students. I'm paying $10,786 a year to live in the dorms, I don't want youtube to be slow. I don't want to be restricted from anything (filesharing I understand), after a day of classes all I want to do is come back to my dorm room and relax, I do afterall pay for the internet verses elementary, junior high, and high school where my parents indirectly paid for the internet through taxes

 

[-(Xyphox)-]

Yep they have you on a throttle, bite the big one and live with it. Thank file sharing for it

 

[Aelfgeft]

So, I just moved in to campus, and my internet speeds in the dorm are aprox 370 kbps...Anyone have a clue what the problem is?

Not trying to flame you here, but count your damn blessings. When I was in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin a few years ago, I had a T1 that was absolutely choked to death. Browsing and downloading small files was all you could do, and I averaged 20-30K. The on-campus dial-up at times was more reliable. And you had no choice but to pay it as part of your segregated fees.

Last time I checked, state-run colleges weren't supposed to be profit centers.

 

[brom42]

Words can't describe how much I disagree with this statement for college students. I'm paying $10,786 a year to live in the dorms, I don't want youtube to be slow. I don't want to be restricted from anything (filesharing I understand), after a day of classes all I want to do is come back to my dorm room and relax, I do afterall pay for the internet verses elementary, junior high, and high school where my parents indirectly paid for the internet through taxes

$10,786 per year? Going to such a cheap school you should be happy with whatever you get. The school I work at is $35,000-$45,000 per year.

But you sound like a typical student. Take the bandwidth you think you should get and multiply it by the number of students, staff and faculty. Don't forget to add all the needed bandwidth for all the school's servers. Then call up a some of the local providers and ask how much it would cost for that connection. If you go to a school of any size, you'd be lucky if your $10,000 would even pay for a week of bandwidth.

If we divide out bandwidth at my job by how many people are on campus, it comes out to a huge 16kbs per person. (I have seen plenty of other schools that were much worse than that!!) Right after school about 75-85% of the students are online. About 2/5 of them are usually visiting heavy bandwidth sites. (ebaums, youtube are some of the worst offenders) So I'm sorry if giving you an education is more important than giving you a fast connection to youtube. Just deal with it, or move out and get your own connection.

 

[swatbat]

$10,786 per year? Going to such a cheap school you should be happy with whatever you get. The school I work at is $35,000-$45,000 per year.

But you sound like a typical student. Take the bandwidth you think you should get and multiply it by the number of students, staff and faculty. Don't forget to add all the needed bandwidth for all the school's servers. Then call up a some of the local providers and ask how much it would cost for that connection. If you go to a school of any size, you'd be lucky if your $10,000 would even pay for a week of bandwidth.

If we divide out bandwidth at my job by how many people are on campus, it comes out to a huge 16kbs per person. (I have seen plenty of other schools that were much worse than that!!) Right after school about 75-85% of the students are online. About 2/5 of them are usually visiting heavy bandwidth sites. (ebaums, youtube are some of the worst offenders) So I'm sorry if giving you an education is more important than giving you a fast connection to youtube. Just deal with it, or move out and get your own connection.

I think the OP is just talking about the dorm costs. Not the costs of the tuition. Also while bandwith can be expensive it is not as expensive as you make it out to be. I would also question the 75-85% online right after school but I don't know your setup or what you define right after school as. In the same sence to the OP you are getting pretty much the same as a DSL connection which isn't too bad. I would say that they have assigned a set amount of bandwith to your dorms and that all of the other students in them are slowing it down where they have also assigned a amount of bandwith to the building that the computer lab is in and you are prob one of the few people trying to download something.

 

[brom42]

I think the OP is just talking about the dorm costs. Not the costs of the tuition. Also while bandwith can be expensive it is not as expensive as you make it out to be. I would also question the 75-85% online right after school but I don't know your setup or what you define right after school as. In the same sence to the OP you are getting pretty much the same as a DSL connection which isn't too bad. I would say that they have assigned a set amount of bandwith to your dorms and that all of the other students in them are slowing it down where they have also assigned a amount of bandwith to the building that the computer lab is in and you are prob one of the few people trying to download something.

We have such a high percentage because we are have a 1 to 1 laptop program. As soon as school gets out we unblock IM and take off some of the other restrictions of the school laptops. So basically every kid is sitting in front of a laptop (they are required to use them in class) and they all start chatting about what they are doing after school and surfing the web.

I have worked in private and public schools since college. At my last university job we had a OC3 line, costing $27,000 per month, and that is before you get into all of the other costs of maintaining all of the equipment and all the services that we ran over the lines so it isn't cheap. Once you get into things like guaranteed uptime and bandwidth, the price goes up quickly.


We restrict on a per connection basis, and being the always creative people IT people are, we pick numbers like 512, 384, etc. So to the OP they are probably restricting each connection to 384kbs to stop the connection from being bogged down. I bet the OP could go on at 3am and he would still get the same speed, even when hardly anyone is online. We have ours set to 256kbs max for web traffic and slower for other services(see my first post) Of course my connection is unlimited and gets top priority.

 

[swatbat]

We have such a high percentage because we are have a 1 to 1 laptop program. As soon as school gets out we unblock IM and take off some of the other restrictions of the school laptops. So basically every kid is sitting in front of a laptop (they are required to use them in class) and they all start chatting about what they are doing after school and surfing the web.

How to you manage "after school". I mean a lot of schools have class from like 8am to 10pm. Does you school have a more organized setup then that? Just seems weird unless you are in a priviate k-12 boarding school or something. From my experience most schools don't block things like IM although the do limit what they do allow as far as services go.

 

[brom42]

How to you manage "after school". I mean a lot of schools have class from like 8am to 10pm. Does you school have a more organized setup then that? Just seems weird unless you are in a priviate k-12 boarding school or something. From my experience most schools don't block things like IM although the do limit what they do allow as far as services go.

You're good. I am currently working at a private 6-12 boarding school. But before here I worked at a University and before that at a private college.

 

[swatbat]

You're good. I am currently working at a private 6-12 boarding school. But before here I worked at a University and before that at a private college.

Ok that makes a lot more sence.