From James Ketterer, Director of Networking, Telecommunication & Technical Services, and Carol L. Smith, CIO
Internet Upgrade is scheduled for December 20
On Sunday, December 20, the Information Services Network Team will upgrade our Internet connection firewalls. These upgrades will increase DePauw’s Internet connection speed to 500 Mbps (5 times faster than our current connection) and eliminate the network slowdowns that we have all been experiencing recently.
Why Has the Internet Been so Slow Recently?
Internet bandwidth usage at DePauw has grown about 30% per year for the past 2 years. Some of the factors driving this include:
- Increased use of rich media such as video clips, sound bites, and flash applets on Web sites
- Increased popularity of streamed video and audio via the Web (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc.)
- Ongoing use of peer-to-peer file sharing – both legal and illegal! (e.g., Limewire, Kazaa, etc.)
- Ever-increasing amounts of email traffic. Currently 400,000 total messages are exchanged per day, 95% of which are spam, leaving 65-70,000 legitimate messages exchanged per day.
- Explosion in the use of Internet-capable smart phones and mobile devices that support email, web browsing, Twitter, Facebook and other communications (e.g., iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, etc.)
The following chart illustrates our yearly growth for the past two years:
DePauw Internet Bandwidth needs have increased dramatically
DePauw currently subscribes to a 110 Mbps (or “110 Meg”) Internet connection and our firewall has a 100 Mbps capacity. Over the course of this fall semester, the campus bandwidth and security needs have outgrown this connection speed and our current systems are working at their limits. This is illustrated in the graph of a typical day’s bandwidth usage, below. As the graph shows, our usage is constrained by the firewall’s 100Mpbs limit and our connection speeds are maxed out during most of the waking hours in any given day.
During the times when usage peaks, our Internet traffic in and out of campus becomes slower across all systems, but is perhaps most immediately noticeable when viewing media on the web (such as YouTube videos), listening to online music, and even just viewing some media-rich Web sites.
What Will the Internet Upgrade Enable?
After the upgrade on December 20, our Internet connection will be increased by a factor of 5 to 500 Mbps. The new firewalls will also provide management tools to help improve security and ensure better availability of bandwidth needed to support the core mission of the University. Looking to the longer term, the new firewall will also have spare capacity to permit future upgrades up to a maximum of 1 Gbps (or 1000 Mbps, 10 times our current speed).
The end result will be faster web browsing, more reliable media streaming and better protection from network threats.
If you have questions …
If you have any questions about the Internet Upgrade, contact Carol Smith, clsmith@depauw.edu.
