Students in residence halls are waiting longer at the computer screen because people outside the Residential Life computer network are using up all their network space.
As a remedy, the Department of Residential Life and the Office of Telecommunications installed a firewall to increase Internet speed for computers connected to Residential Life’s network, ResNet.
Although OTC planned to have the firewall operating Wednesday, it did not work properly during testing and OTC continues to test the software, said Terry Doub, OTC network security manager.
Once the firewall works, Doub said it will prevent people outside the network from downloading information from a computer on the Residential Life system.
“We didn’t design our network to share our files with the rest of the world,” Doub said.
OTC will test the software again Wednesday and hopes to have it operating in a few weeks.
Students have misconceptions about what a firewall does, Doub said.
“People’s first thought is that we’re putting a firewall in to block them,” he said. “They think that it means they can’t get out to download music or play games or surf the web.”
A student who establishes a computer connection inside a residence hall will be allowed to bring information, music and movies back through the firewall. Only people who do not have a connection inside the firewall will not be allowed, Doub said.
Gary Dukes, Residential Life Information Systems manager, said the firewall will increase the Internet speed for the 3,310 computers in the dorms, although the amount of the increase depends on the effectiveness of the firewall.
“You can either manage bandwidth or purchase new bandwidth,” Dukes said. “But it doesn’t matter how much bandwidth you have, people are always going to use it.”
Every time the University increases the amount of space available for ResNet users, it becomes used immediately by people outside the network, Doub said.
This is because students engage in peer-to-peer file sharing but do not restrict downloads from their own computer, Doub said.
Since the students have such a fast connection, people outside the network naturally select the campus computers as the place to get their music or movies.
The result is higher web traffic and slower Internet speed for dorm residents, Doub said.
Dukes said a firewall will manage the bandwidth and reserve as much as possible for students.
A system should have roughly the same amount of information going out as coming in, Doub said.
He said ResNet, by contrast, has about twice as much traffic going out compared to coming in.
Dukes said another problem is students set up their computers as servers rather than workstations, against LSU’s computing policy statement.
The servers exchange music, movies and computer programs with people outside the network, tying up Internet speed, he said.
But a firewall would remedy this, Dukes said.
“It’s useless to have a server if no one can access that information,” Dukes said.
Some residents said they are tired of waiting 30 minutes to download a three-minute song.
Eron Rousell, a pre-law business sophomore, said he downloads a lot of music but now just uses his PAWS account because the residential network, ResNet, is so slow.
Erin Couvillion, an English sophomore, said she also has had problems in the past.
“But if [the firewall] will really work, it’ll make my life easier,” she said.
Doub said students will be able to share files with students in other dorms.
“We’re not blocking anything that is established from inside the dorms,” Doub said.