Internet Bandwidth: A Costly Resource – Please Use Wisely
December 22nd, 2011 – by Jack
EMU relies heavily on its Internet connection for a wide spectrum of resources and functionality. As of December 2011, the campus uses a 45mbps metropolitan Ethernet connection which costs about $50,000 each year. This is a relatively low amount of bandwidth for an institution our size because, for a number of reasons, Internet bandwidth in our area is very expensive. A “data traffic shaper” management appliance is used to ensure that this scarce resource is available to those who need it most to fulfill their institutional responsibilities. During traditional work-hours (Mon-Fri, 8am – 5pm) prioritization is given to faculty and staff and outside of these hours the full capacity of the connection is made available to the residence halls.
The types of Internet use determines how much of the connection an individual user uses. Low bandwidth uses include email and casual web surfing. Bandwidth increases significantly for “streaming” activities such as listening to music and watching videos. Some of the most intense use of bandwidth occurs with streaming video from movie sources such as NetFlix. For this reason we block NetFlix in computer labs.
We evaluate our Internet connection needs each year during the budget planning process and project what kind of a capacity increase we should build into the budget. Because of the tight budget situation this year (2011-12) we did not increase our Internet capacity in September. The result is that our Internet connection is now “maxed-out” most of the day (i.e. from about 10am through mid-night).
We are in the process of determining whether to re-prioritize some budget areas to allow for an purchasing an increase to our Internet bandwidth but we also know that the campus community will use whatever capacity is available.
Special Note to Faculty/Staff: Because you are given “top preference” during traditional work-hours, please do NOT use your computer during these times to connect to “entertainment” kinds of web resources. As examples, this means streaming videos (e.g. NetFlix, Hulu, Crackle, etc) and streaming audio (e.g. Pandora, Internet radio stations, etc).