Cox Communications Internet customers near campus should noticefaster and better Internet speeds because of a process calledsplitting the nodes.
Students that live off campus may or may not have noticed in thelast few weeks that their Internet service had been running slowerthat usual.
“It jumped around a lot,” said Amy-Leigh Fontaine, generalstudies junior. Fontaine said that her Cox Internet connection atUniversity Commons would sometimes suddenly disconnect, thenreconnect seconds later.
The slow connections and unusual Internet behavior off campusover the past few weeks was due to two problems: large amounts ofInternet activity and installation of hardware to deal with thelarge amounts of Internet activity.
According to Sharon Kleinpeter, vice president of governmentaland public affairs at Cox Communications, the area near campus hasa high amount of Internet activity and it was necessary to splitthe node.
In addition to regular student activity, so many students areonline gamers or download music and movies, she said.
“I don’t really download music, I download television shows,”said Jason Crewes, finance junior.
Crewes lives in Tiger Plaza which does not use Cox, but Crewesis an example of average off- campus Internet activity.
Cox Communications in Baton Rouge closely monitors itsseven-parish system and determined that the area off campus washighly penetrated and needed to split the nodes, Kleinpetersaid.
A node is a physical box located somewhere in the area that Coxis providing Internet service to.
The node receives and transmits data from Cox’s main operatingcenter and the computers that are connected to the node throughfiber optic cable.
As activity increases, the node must work harder to supply alarger number of people and when the node’s work becomes too much,Cox decides to split the node, Kleinpeter said.
Splitting a node actually is a process of adding a second nodeto broaden Internet bandwidth by reducing the amount of work thefirst node must do.
To split the node, Cox installed a second physical box near thefirst one and connected sheaths of fiber optic cable to it.
“For example, instead of one node servicing 500 houses, we takeextra fiber not connected to the first node and install it to thesecond node. Then we have two nodes, each with more fiber than theyoriginally had and each servicing only 250 houses,” Kleinpetersaid.
This increases capacity, Kleinpeter said.
“If you think about it, it is kind of like a highway and we areadding more lanes,” Kleinpeter said.
The area around campus was actually split into three nodes,Kleinpeter said.
Kleinpeter said the installation was finished last week and thatthe Internet should be running faster.
“That’s cool,” said Barbara Townsend, English sophomore.
Townsend does not have Internet service herself, but noticedthat her boyfriend’s Cox Internet service at Stadium SquareApartments has been running erratically recently.
Fontaine, who used the Internet Monday, noticed it ran muchbetter.
“It’s a lot more convenient,” she said.
However, some students off campus may still notice theirInternet running slow, but that may be a problem on their end, saidScott Campbell, computer science senior.
Campbell is a Residential Computing Science consultant. Thoughhis job working on computers on campus not connected to Cox, hedoes have advice for students who live off campus.
If a student’s computer is still running slow they may have toreset their Internet connection, Campbell said.
This all can be done from a student’s own room, he said, andshould only be done if the student is experiencing problems.
To reset an Internet connection, turn the cable modem off, thenturn the router off, in that order, and make sure both have allcords completely unplugged from both the wall and the computer.
After turning them both off, Campbell said to reconnect thecable modem and router and then turn on the cable modem and thenthe router in that order.
Campbell said that a computer could also be running slow becauseof improper software installed on it.
“Make sure your computer is virus-free and has Windows updateand anti-virus software installed, which LSU provides for free,”Campbell said.
According to Kleinpeter, now that the installation of the newnodes is complete, no one should need new hardware on theircomputers, everything should run fine as is.