As a result of the student-led petition for faster internet, administration is now increasing the bandwidth from 45 Mbps to 100 Mbps. Once this change is implemented, students will allegedly be able to watch YouTube videos without having to wait for them to buffer.
As of Feb. 15, 2008, the Internet in student residence halls ran at 384 Kbps (kilo bites per second) during the week and 768 Kbps on Saturday and Sunday, according to the Information Technology (IT) web site. In addition, the network throughput capacity on campus was 45 Mbps. Compared to the rating of Mbps and Gbps, the transmission speed of Kbps is rated considerably slower.
The common area of confusion is bits per second and bytes per second, said Branden Kirk of IT. Internet speed is mostly quantified in bits per second, but many times computer applications like web browsers will show users a data rate in bytes per second. This confuses people because they see a smaller number in bytes than bits, because 8 bits equals 1 byte. A 56k modem is 56 kilobits per second, but many times people mistakenly relate 56 kilobytes per second.
As a student and frequent user of the Internet, freshman Brian Hong bemoans the current condition of the service.
“Being a fairly small private school, you would expect that the speed of Biola’s Internet would be fairly decent,” Hong said. “They already block every possible downloading program, and even if we do download other things, such as a professor’s PowerPoint, it always takes eons.”
However, students feel that now is the time to make a change, and want to make every effort to enable faster internet as soon as possible. In order to confirm his decision to petition for this, Hope North Senator Eric Weaver talked to AS President Jared Gibo about the ramifications behind what it would do for the school. His proposal was met with positive feedback from both Gibo and the network administrator.
“This situation is the kind of thing that affects both the administration and students,” said Weaver. “The administration wanted to see a change in the slow Internet speed as well, and they were in a way happy to see students step up and say that this is important for all of us.”
Throughout the process, Weaver was extremely encouraged by how willing administration was to listen to the needs of the students and by how their desire to help the students was very apparent.
After the results from the student petition slips were tallied, they were given to Gibo, who presented the situation to administration. The administration wanted to know how they could gauge the satisfaction of the students, according to Weaver.
“If you want to know whether or not they are pleased with the Internet, just plug your laptop into a port and watch a YouTube video – if it streams perfectly, then you’ve done your job,” Weaver told them.
Despite the common misconception, this change will not be reflected in the tuition increase for next year, as it is simply a redistribution of finance within IT. The increased speed of the Internet will not be an added financial burden on top of what students have to cope with already.
“But to be honest, I think a lot of students would have been content with paying more money,” Weaver said. “I’ve had students who I don’t even know come up and give me a hug, saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, I heard YOU’RE the guy!’”
All in all, this entire situation demonstrates that collaboration between students and faculty can be successful. It also shows that administration is serving students from the highest level down, as Weaver generally found the attitude of IT and the administration very easy to work with.
“This is something that I’ve been very pleased with, and it gives me a lot of hope,” said Weaver. “When students have ideas, the administration will listen to them, and that’s just awesome on so many levels.”
