News

Campus networks upgraded

The Resident Network of University Housing and the Division of Information Technology have faced an abundance of challenges over the past several years — including major viruses and peer-to-peer file sharing — that have clogged the university bandwidth.

But Sathish Gopalrao, assistant director of information technology at University Housing, is optimistic about the ResNet system at the University of Wisconsin for the upcoming semester.

“This fall has been our best ResNet opening date,” he said.

ResNet has required students to register their computers and has implemented bandwidth-limiting mechanisms. Students’ downloading habits, however, are not in danger, according to Gopalrao.

“We never go into the content,” Gopalrao said. “[We] don’t monitor or look at what’s coming in and out of a person’s computer per se, but you’ve got to realize at the end of the day [it is] going to be a shared resource in terms of bandwidth.”

Bandwidth, Gopalrao says, is limited to five gigabytes of off-campus traffic per student in any seven-day period.

University Housing and ResNet have made it a point to educate their students about downloading. According to their webpage, ResNet does not “encourage or condone the use of university network resources to violate copyright laws.”

Gopalrao said with the recent proliferation of the Internet, “it seems like some of these things are easier. It all goes back to the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act].”

Former president Bill Clinton signed the DMCA in 1998 to curb digital copyright infringement.

Though ResNet and DoIt have decided against making peer-to-peer applications illegal, they have taken steps to curb their popularity.

“Peer-to-peer files have a certain profile, and we’ve constricted that bandwidth,” said Brian Rust, communications manager at DoIt.

Still, students have found ways of evading these measures.

Recent spawns of the former giant of peer-to-peer sharing Napster, such as Ares, have managed to retain reliable download speeds.

“It’s much quicker than everything we’ve tried,” UW freshman Joseph Simler said.

The recent introduction of Apple’s iTunes has allowed students to share their music within a network without having to download.

Gopalrao said the Recording Industry Association of America has yet to issue anything beyond the initial “cease and desist” order to any student resident of University Housing. “That’s why we go by that byline — don’t let yourself be the first one,” he said.

Other schools have resorted to new methods to quench the thirst of music-hungry students.

Duke University will give each freshman an Apple iPod for the 2004-2005 school year, according to Duke Magazine online.

George Washington University and the University of Southern California recently signed deals with Napster that allow students to stream any music to their computers for free, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We have put that back on the agenda,” Gopalrao said. “We are watching [and] we have not closed the door on it. We have taken a stance collectively to see how this model is working out at other schools.”