Internet Part 2....

Well, things are looking brighter. Mail is able to be pulled from off-campus at about 5k/sec (much improved over our .5k/sec if you could get a connection at all). We can connect to AIM and Yahoo again, and amazingly, we can actually get to websites without getting a "Connection Timed Out" or "Cannot Find Address for Server" errors. (No, it's not name servers, I have both on and off campus DNS servers in my /etc/resolv.conf)

Traceroutes from off campus to campus look really good.

I'm starting to suspect they've altered our traffic shaping box and cramped down on more stuff.

Three days ago:

"If you are trying to get the new drivers for your video card, make sure you are using http...it'll be much faster than ftp." -- ResNet helpdesk person...

Oh, okay...I can deal with that...

Next day, I'll call back about 4:45pm and get a different person. On campus bandwidth and response times are back to normal, but off-campus is still totally in the toilet.

Help: "Wait for a few days, and hopefully the network will speed up."

Me: "I'm just supposed to wait for a few days?"

Help: "Yeah. Guess there's just lotsa people doing something."

Me: "So is there a known problem?"

Help: "Yeah"

Me: "What is it and is it being worked on?" (I don't expect the technical of 'what' is happening, but something like, we have a dead router or something)

Help: "Something isn't working right, but they aren't sure what. All the network people have gone home for the day."

Me: "Okay, thanks"

*click*

*SCREAM* So, 2000 ports out of the 9700 we have on campus are having major networking issues and the networking people just go home at 4:30 like nothing is wrong? (thanks the Goddess it's not mid-terms)...

Well, that tells me that either our local SCSU network is fine and it's an InterTech/Onvoy problem or the ResNet network is being treated like a redheaded stepchild.

Having watched our traffic analysis, it's good to see that Quake 3, Dark Ago of Camelot, and other such network games have some of the highest traffic priority on our network. I understand putting Kazaa and WinMX at the far far far bottom of the priority pile (actually, here they just bandwidth consign them to hell, which I don't like but completely understand). The games thing irks me. The stated reason from ResNet for that "It keeps us from getting flooded with calls about slow games."

On to a related subject...

New ResNet AUP stipulates that no one is allowed to bring in outside connectivity. That is, no wireless, DSL, cable modem, nothing. I'm not amused about this. Not when Charter was promoting 1.5mb down/128k up service for $34.99 for students on campus. To hell with their worries about people trying to load balance and route between the SCSU network and the "real internet" from Charter...

I'll take the shitty upload speeds to have a system thats works nearly all the time.

The SCSU network can fly. I've seen it fly. Two weeks after fall move-in, I was getting 400-550k/sec downloads on most anything...now with what ever is going on, I'm doing lucky to get 10k/sec. Hell, we're getting sub 128k ISDN speeds!

I think I'll walk down to the ResNet office and see if I can talk to Darrin (the top dog at ResNet) and see if I can find out what the hell is going on. I don't care if I can't fix it, they can't fix it (meaning it's off campus) but just getting a straight answer would be nice as opposed to being told to just deal with it for a few days and *hope* it gets better.