The College temporarily doubled its network bandwidth for a two-week trial period on Wednesday to compensate for an unusually slow Internet connection, according to Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president of information technology and chief information officer. The increased Internet usage at the College is primarily due to an increase in students' and professors' video downloads, particularly Netflix's Watch Instantly streaming video service, Waite-Franzen said.
The College receives its Internet connection through two "pipes " one on campus provided by VTel and another provided by Level 3 Communications, located at the College's secondary data center Director of Technical Services David Bucciero said. Each router has a capacity of 200 megabits per second, which defines the total amount of data that the College can receive at any given moment, according to Bucciero.
The VTel connection has recently reached its capacity, since individuals on the Dartmouth network are requesting more data than the connection can deliver. The problem which began to build in January and became apparent to most users in early February has caused the entire Internet connection to slow down, according to Waite-Franzen.
YouTube requests, increased Netflix usage and peer-to-peer downloads have contributed to Internet overconsumption, according to Waite-Franzen. Although students have been streaming Netflix videos since last fall, the company's new streaming service was not heavily advertised until December, Waite-Franzen said.
Data consumption is currently double what it was during the same time period last year, according to Waite-Franzen.
Computer Services also recently discovered an on-campus research project using Flickr an online photo and video sharing service that may be contributing to increased Internet usage, according to Bucciero, who declined to provide further details about the project because the investigation is ongoing.
After the College asked VTel to temporarily increase bandwidth in an attempt to determine the network's capacity needs, the Internet capacity was increased from 200 to 400 megabits per second beginning Wednesday afternoon, Waite-Franzen said. During the day on Thursday, usage was approximately 250 megabits per second, with spikes of up to 300 megabits per second Wednesday evening, according to Waite-Franzen.
While Waite-Franzen said she did not know the total cost of permanently increasing the College's bandwidth, she estimated that it could be "tens of thousands of dollars."
The College along with the University of New Hampshire, the University of Maine and other institutions in the region received a grant through the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act that will provide funding to install higher-capacity data lines in the area. The data line in Hanover, however, will not be introduced for another 12 to 15 months, Waite-Franzen said. If this data line is installed, the College will be able to increase its bandwidth without an increased cost, she said.
Until the data line is installed, everyone at the College must be aware of their Internet usage, Waite-Franzen said.
"We do have to watch that we're sharing this capacity if any individual uses too much capacity or any area uses too much capacity, that hurts others," she said. "We don't have unlimited resources to throw at this problem, but we've got the resources to make the problem go away if we all are good consumers and we all share this resource."
YouTube has been running particularly slowly because it is accessed through the clogged VTel connection, according to Bucciero. The College cannot control which sites are transmitted through each connection, he said.
Students and professors at the College said in interviews with The Dartmouth that slow Internet speeds have had detrimental effects.
Religion professor Kevin Reinhart, who specializes in Islamic studies, said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth that the slow connection has prevented his students from accessing Islamic news sources.
"With all that is happening in the Middle East, and given the limited and often ill-informed coverage that comes from the American media, sources like al-Jazeera both in Arabic and English are essential tools for anyone who wants to follow these important events," he said. "But Dartmouth's bandwidth, it seems, was limited and this made it impossible particularly to use video."
It took the class 45 minutes to watch a 15 minute video clip, Reinhart said in his e-mail.
Pedro Hurtado '14 said YouTube has been very slow to load, even when students use an ethernet cable with their laptops. The recently increased bandwidth has not made a noticeable difference in terms of shortening the loading times of videos, he said.
Other students, however, said they have noticed a change in Internet speed over the past two days.
Julia Watson '12 said she used to have to pause videos after a couple seconds and wait for them to load, but that videos seemed to be loading quickly on Wednesday evening.
