Silence is Broken
by Jay
Friday, February 13, 2004 - 4:49 AM
(this is a letter to the local school paper
which published a letter attacking our computer network)
After reading Jason Bullington’s letter attacking the slow
internet connection and the administration behind it I’ve decided to
break my four years of silence on the issue and at least let the
other side be known. First of all, let’s set one fact straight: I
am biased. My last name matches that of our current network
administrator, Mr. David Epperhart. If you are the type of person
who refuses to accept an opinion from a biased source such as
myself, even though there is a very good chance I more informed on
the issue than you are, then I suggest you stop reading this now and
continue with your “misguided” beliefs. But if you are curious to
know what’s really happening with the network and to hear from
someone who has actually done some research on the subject
then I hope you continue reading this and maybe I can help shed some
light on a subject not everyone understands. This letter is not
directed precisely at Mr. Bullington but to anyone who has
complained about the problem and done nothing about it. But since he
was the one who publicly stated his opinion I will be using him as
an example even though his actions might not fall under ever issue I
bring up. Before I get into the meat of the letter I would like to
say this: I am doing this on my own free will. No one asked this of
me, nor am I being paid to do this. This is my personal opinion and
not that of Computer Services. I’m writing this as a concerned
student. I’ve lived in the dorms for four years and the same rules
apply to me as they do to everyone else. If the network goes down I
am just as mad as everyone else, because after all, I paid
for this internet access.
When the network goes down I take an action that no one else seems willing to do: I call Computer and Communication Services and inform them of the problem as opposed to sitting around whining about it. And anyone can do this too! The phone number is posted in every computer lab; all the dorms have directories; and if worse comes to worse Womack isn’t too far from anywhere on campus and a little walk never hurt anyone. Computer services can’t fix a problem if they don’t know it exists. If you call them to report the network is down one of two things will happen:
-
They will tell you they are aware of the situation and inform you of the nature of the problem and when it will be fixed.
-
They will thank you for bringing it to their attention and will begin to work on it immediately.
Wow, that sure works a lot better than waiting days for them to fix a problem they don’t know about! And if it’s after 5:00 and no one is at CSS, we now have student workers in EVERY dorm that can help you.
“But shouldn’t CCS know when the network goes down since they use it
also?”
Yes and no. HSU has two networks, one for faculty and one for the students. The faculty side rarely goes down (unless a dreaded mail virus hits) since most of the faculty don’t partake in the activities that can bring down the network (more on this later), and since none of the CCS staff are students living in the dorms they don’t always know when the student network goes down. They do have tools that inform them when something goes down, but sometimes there is so much going on in CCS no one is around to catch the warning. You have to realize that there are nearly 800 faculty computers on this campus, plus 500-600 student/lab computers. And due to a budget crisis we only have 6-10 people (including upper level administration) who have the Herculean task of making sure those computers all stay in working condition. So please be a little more understanding when your computer or network goes down and it takes the a few days to fix the problem because a major new virus attacked the network (almost a monthly occurrence now-a-days) and nearly brought it down.
Now let’s establish the true purpose of the Henderson networks. The internet is primarily used for EDUCATION purposes on this campus. Therefore the primary goal is to keep the network running at level where anyone can go to a webpage and have it load at a decent speed. If students start using the ultra fast speeds to download their large music/movie files then the network gets clogged up with traffic and suddenly no one on campus can use the internet for the primary purpose. Thus a form of control had to be placed on the student network so they couldn’t slow down the entire campus with their greedy media “needs”. Which brings us to the next issue: What slow speeds are you talking about?
In my experiences over this semester the internet has always loaded at a fast speed. Sometimes it slows down mid-day since that is the time when it has the highest usage from both faculty and students. But to my knowledge, no webpage has taken more than ten seconds to load on any of my (crappy) computers. In fact most of them seem to load instantaneously. Also, over the past few weeks I’ve downloaded many legal programs on to my computer and nearly all of them downloaded at speeds of 100k/s or faster. On the other hand I’ve noticed that the popular “file sharing” programs (namely Kazaa) which specialize in illegal software have suddenly started downloading at horrible speeds. What necessary educational files or programs are so large that they take hours to download? I can’t think of anything you need for class or research that is so large that it requires extremely fast download speeds. And the few large programs that do exist are usually on servers set up to accept HSU connections so they DO download fast. The only files that are running slow are the illegal media files which are usually so large that it takes days/weeks to download them at the slow rate we currently have allotted for them. So are you complaining that now you can’t download your illegal movies, games, and music at decent speeds? If so then we have some major issues that need to be addressed.
Mr. Bullington said that his freshman year the speeds were “like a Ferrari” and now they are a “Ford P.O.S.”. But what he doesn’t realize is the difference between then and now. We were both freshmen in the fall of 2000, which is widely considered as the time of free music and movies on the internet. At that time only a few people on campus knew what an MP3 was and even fewer knew where to find them online. The few of us who did know then had all that extra bandwidth on the Henderson network to use for ourselves and we downloaded as much “free” music as we could. As the years passed more and more people suddenly became “in the know” and that extra bandwidth was being divided up between more and more of us. Before we knew it, our little high speed secret was known by everyone and instead of dividing 900 k/s between 10 people, we were trying to divide it up between 900 people (these numbers are only examples and are not the true speeds our network is capable of). As the Oracle article Mr. Bullington was referring to mentioned, the network has improved over the years and we do have more bandwidth than ever before. But we also have more people trying to abuse that bandwidth. And when it got to the point that it affected teachers and students doing legit work on the internet something had to be done. Thus some restrictions were placed on the student network and everyone started complaining about it. But you don’t realize how lucky you really are.
Henderson actually has one of the best internet connections in the state, and the fewest restrictions as well. My sister goes to a school two times the size of HSU and their internet connection consists of free telephone lines devoted to 56k modems. Those students don’t even have a network! U of A in Fayetteville has the same connection that Henderson does, but they are also dividing it between four times the students. And Texas Tech University, which has more students than three times the population of Arkadelphia, has exceptionally fast speeds for anyone to use but all file sharing programs and video games have been blocked so no one can abuse the bandwidth. Finally, OBU has twice as many people living on campus and yet they only use half the bandwidth. Then again, maybe that is because all porn sites are blocked. Nearly every transfer student I talk to says they don’t understand what our students are complaining about because HSU has a great network compared to where they came from. You are lucky that we are still allowed to use Kazaa even though every other college on campus is banning it. HSU also provides FREE web hosting for EVERY student and yet I don’t see anyone using it other than me. There are free tutorials on the HSU webpage on how to create a webpage (I should know, I helped write some of them). You have all these wonderful tools and information at your disposal and yet no one uses them! And just in case the newspaper decides to cut this rant to save space, you can always read it in it’s entirety on my free webpage at http://rrants.hsu.edu/ , plus you can comment on it and even ask me questions about anything I’ve mentioned!
Next, I’ll focus on Mr. Bullington directly. He complains that the network went down over the weekend recently, and I agree that it did. The first time was when CCS was installing a new firewall service so that now you don’t have to do that annoying ISA installation when you first log on the network. This is the first time in years they’ve done this so I don’t think you should complain about them trying to make your life easier. The next weekend the network went down only in Sturgis, the dorm in which both Mr. Bullington and I reside. The only people affected were the few of us who live in “the land of milk and honey” but even then I agree it was an annoyance not to have the internet. Thus, instead of complaining about the problem I informed CCS about it. I then offered my own time to fix it and along with fellow resident Bryan DeLong I spent the next three hours of my free time fixing our network. Neither of us got paid for our work that weekend, and as far as I am aware no one even thanked us for it (not that I was doing it for either of those reasons). It just bothers me that after all our unappreciated hard work to fix the problem, which happened to be an unpredictable hardware glitch no one could have foreseen, people still complained about the problem and did nothing to fix it. And this is definitely not the first time this has happened. Over the past four years my friends and I have used our little free time to fix hundreds of student computers, printers, and networks (including Mr. Bullington’s) free of charge and out of the kindness of our hearts. And what thanks do we get? A public letter attacking our deeds and demanding a change in administration.
Finally, if you are still mad about your slow download speeds then understand this: part of the problem behind Kazaa’s slow speed is the program itself. It has been attacked by so much media slander and business lawsuits that it is about to go the way of the dodo. But, like a hydra’s head, for every one file-sharing program that is taken down two more take its place. There are already plenty of alternatives to Kazaa that are not blocked on our network (it would be full time job to block every one that pops up), some of which get amazing speeds and don’t bog down the network at all. But they are well hidden and nearly impossible to find on your own. But if you are so desperate to get your illegal files then why don’t you spend time trying to find these hidden gems rather than complain about your current file sharing program’s lack of speed. Also, don’t expect anyone who does know about these programs to tell you what they are because just like three years ago they like their little secret bandwidth stash and they know what happens when their secret is made public. Half the fun is finding these Kazaa alternatives yourself! Then again, it’s probably more satisfying to actually get a job and buy the movies/music yourself but I’m not going down that alley. After all, I’m a poor college student just like you. I just choose to find a solution to my problems rather than complain about them and blame the administration.
Jay Epperhart
Senior Digital Art and Design Major
http://rrants.hsu.edu
