Acorn

Drew students need their Internet to go faster than the lunch line at the Commons. Modern students rely on the Internet for everything from e-mail and social networking to access to course materials and online blackboards.

"The Internet seems to be as bad as my old school dial up connection," sophomore Kyle Nugent said. "I've been asking around and I've been hearing a lot of the same-'slow internet.'" The slow network connection is causing anxiety for many students who rely on the system for classwork. "I couldn't get to the K: drive so I couldn't do homework. It was paralyzing," sophomore Jessica Yanefski said.

Students say the slow Internet puts a damper on access to online classwork. "The listening exercises on [the foreign language program] Quia take forever," sophomore Lindsey Stefan added.

The slower connection affects some students and buildings more than others. "There have been some Internet problems in Asbury," House Assistant of Spirituality House junior Heather Alters said. "It has been really slow in general. Sometimes it kicks us off AOL Instant Messenger and it takes forever for Groupwise [e-mail system] to open."

Although talk about the slow Internet is noticeably spreading over the campus, no one has called Computing and Networking Services (CNS).

"I did a quick scan of our support database and I don't see any open calls about Internet service problems," CNS Director Michael Richichi said. "We do try and monitor things but we also need customer feedback to determine scope and impact."

CNS supports on-campus computing, networking, the Computer Initiative, PC repair and deployment and telecommunications services. Students visit the CNS helpdesk in Brothers College for assistance with their laptops.

CNS is addressing the problem with the network, according to Richichi. "We understand Internet performance is not meeting expectations and we're taking steps to make it better," Richichi said. "It's taking longer than we like to test and configure things but we're hoping to improve things soon."

Richichi said the slow connection is partially a result of an increased number of users on campus. "What we're most likely seeing is a resource allocation issue-we have more dewhether it's downloading more songs and TV shows in iTunes, more streaming videos from sites like YouTube, downloading movies, and using [telecommunication] services like Skype."

He said that right now the network is not set up to directly support that type of online activity. "The good news is that it will get better soon," Richichi said.

"At this point our primary connection is through NJEdge.net and we have a 20 megabytes per second connection shared among the campus," Richichi said. "That clearly isn't enough, and we're currently working to transition to a connection with Lightpath, which is Cablevision's business Internet provider, to get a 50 Mbps link. Lightpath will allow us to provide much more bandwidth for less cost, so we're hoping to upgrade our capacity more dynamically based on need."

Richichi said that according to a recent online discussion about small college Internet services, Drew is still above average at its current 20 Mbps. 

"We don't have any formal wireless connections in residence halls except in the Welch-Holloway and Tolley-Brown lounges at this point," Richichi said. "We have ordered additional access points and will be installing them in other residence hall lounges this semester. We're targeting the lounges so that people have an ability to work outside their rooms."

Although wireless does work in certain dorm rooms scattered throughout campus, it is unintentional. "Since the Learning Center, University Center and Commons have wireless access, students who are near those residence halls can often get a signal from those buildings," Richichi said. "We recommend students use their wired connections in the rooms.... It works much better. If an entire residence hall tried to share a wireless connection performance would degrade significantly."

Until the Internet issues are resolved, Richichi advises students to do what they can on their own to make their computers run smoothly.

"We recommend people use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Keep your Windows patches up to date. We'll be rolling out automated patch management to all student computers to make that easier," Richichi said.

Richichi also said it's important for students to watch out for computer viruses.

"Don't click on anything, open anything or run anything that you don't know what it is and why someone sent it to you, even if it's someone you trust," he advised. "Don't click on links you get in AIM unless you know it's legitimate. Run SpyBot, Ad-Aware and/or Windows Defender frequently and listen to what it says."

Finally, Richichi said that students should not be shy about bringing their laptops to the Helpdesk.

"If your computer starts slowing down," he said. "opening random windows or otherwise behaving badly, please bring it down to the CNS Helpdesk, where we can look at it."

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