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Contents 1 Case's internet connection 2 Connection Speed in Case Housing 2.1 Traffic limiting details 2.2 Solving the problem 2.2.1 Limiting P2P applications 3 Internet Use Graphs

[edit] Case's internet connection

The Case Network's main connection to the Internet is through OneCleveland. Internet traffic to Internet2 peer institutions is routed on the Abilene backbone, a separate (and faster) connection from the commodity Internet link. Case's physical connection to the internet is a gigabit ethernet link. Total commodity internet bandwidth for the entire campus was 500Mb/s as of summer 2006.

Although the campus internet connection is very reliable, Finagle's law still applies. Usually, the connection will die only a handful of times per semester. However, it is practically guaranteed to die at least once during the final week of class or during finals. This most recently occurred in the late night/early morning of December 5 and 6, 2006, during the last week of class.

[edit] Connection Speed in Case Housing

Many students complain about the speed of the Internet connection in Case housing. While it is true that there is a packet shaper in place to limit student internet traffic, especially during working hours when Case staff require the Internet connection to perform their duties efficiently, there is still adequate bandwidth to handle all students' download requirements.

As explained in this forum post, extraordinarily high upload bandwidth use interferes with TCP acknowledgment packets, which is the cause of high network latency (or "ping times"). This is especially noticeable by students who play online games.

It is theorized [1] that the high upload traffic is largely due to students using peer-to-peer file sharing applications (such as BitTorrent) to share files with off-campus users. Students who engage in such activities are encouraged to limit their upload bandwidth use, so they don't interfere with gaming and other uses of the campus network. Most peer-to-peer clients can be configured to cap upload speeds.

[edit] Traffic limiting details

According to Jeff Gumpf, the following rules dictate internet traffic behavior (as of Spring 2006) [2]

1. Between 7am and 7pm, residence halls are allocated 1/3 of the available off-campus Internet bandwidth or about 67Mb/s
2. Between 7pm and 7am, residence halls are allocated 2/3 of the available off-campus Internet bandwidth or about 133Mb/s
3. No residence hall has come close to using up the 1Gb/s bandwidth that connects the residence hall to the network backbone (which runs at 10Gb/s). Residence hall traffic peaks at less than 100Mb/s. Backbone traffic comes nowhere near 10Gb/s. So the bandwidth problem is not on-campus.

[edit] Solving the problem

The internet is slow in residential housing because of the enormous amount of outbound traffic. The small percentage of individuals who upload gigabytes upon gigabytes of data to the internet slow the internet down for everyone else. However, there is currently no firm policy in place to govern this behavior [3]. Illegal file sharing is discouraged and prohibited by the Acceptable Use Policy. However, legitimate uses for P2P exist and their use is allowed on campus as a result.

ITS and Student Affairs monitor a list of bandwidth usage and may take action against individuals using excessive bandwidth.

[edit] Limiting P2P applications

Because P2P applications can cause the internet to become very slow for persons living in residential housing, it is recommended to limit your P2P traffic, especially upload traffic. The following guidelines, if followed, will allow the internet to be more responsive:

• Limit your total upload bandwidth. Say, 50KB/s
• If using Bittorrent, don't seed forever. Cut seeding off as soon as you are done downloading the file. If you want to give back to the community, wait until you have uploaded as much as you have downloaded. Continuous seeding just wastes outgoing bandwidth.
• Have P2P applications active only during certain times of the day. Unfortunately, there is some disagreement over what time is best.
  • During the day, most students are in class and therefore do not require bandwidth for gaming. But, there is less student bandwidth overall during the day.
  • During the evening and night, there is more bandwidth available to students. But this is the time of day when online gaming is most popular, so excessive use of P2P applications during this time is likely to disrupt gaming performance the most.
  • During the late night and early morning (2AM - 7AM), many students are sleeping, and student bandwidth allocation is high. If you can schedule P2P traffic for this time, it is probably the best.

[edit] Internet Use Graphs

Download Bandwidth Use, Mb/s

Upload Bandwidth Use, Mb/s