You sit down at your computer to do some research for a class project. As you're waiting for the pages to load on the screen, you decide you want some popcorn. You return to your desk and find that the page is still loading. The green bars are slowly appearing or the wave is silently crashing on the corner of your monitor. Suddenly the microwave timer goes off. It's been two and half minutes and your popcorn is perfect, but your research is off to a slow start.
If you are one of the many residents on the College's campus, this scenario will probably sound familiar to you. Since most of our students are connected to the network from their rooms, they often experience slow connections because of heavy traffic.
"The internet is just so slow sometimes," Kristine Sytsma, freshman music major said. "It can take up to five minutes to load a page at certain times."
Usually the network works slowest during the evening into night time because that's when most students are online in their rooms. During this time it can be especially hard to log into Student Online Courseware System (SOCS) and The Electronic Student Services (TESS).
According to Shawn Sivy, the associative director of network/technical services, there are no plans to upgrade the College's internet bandwidth at this time. Last year, an Internet Bandwidth Committee was formed to look into the issues at the College. After sending a survey to all the RES.net subscribers, 56 percent of those who responded were satisfied with the internet response from their dorms and only 44 percent were not.
"While we would like to have a higher satisfaction rate, by no means is there an overwhelming level of dissatisfaction with current service. There are no plans for upgrades at this time. However, bandwidth upgrades are not out of the question when the contract is renewed in the future with our Internet Service Provider."
While some students are very annoyed about internet service, others are happy with the fact that it works.
"Generally it works fine and as long as it's working, I have no complaints," Matt Wasser, freshman music major said.
However, there have been instances when our internet service hasn't worked at all. For example, last semester the
