The University’s wireless Internet has been especially slow in some areas of campus, many students have noticed. Specifically, residents in lower areas of campus have complained of unreliable Internet connection, particularly after 8 p.m.
The Internet bandwidth in Bloomberg Hall peaked last Friday at midnight at around 84 megabits per second, which is less than 10 percent of the total one gigabit per second bandwidth available to the building.
“Princeton says that it is a fully wireless campus,” Mira Mehta ’14 said, “but it doesn’t live up to that because the wireless is not always at a usable speed.”
Mehta explained that she often had trouble with the Internet connection in her room last year, resulting in her frequent use of an Ethernet cord to get a faster connection. She was told by a Residential Computing Consultant that the Internet problems were due to the age of the building.
“The slow connection does sometimes impede students’ studying,” Mehta said.
Meanwhile, Eduardo Contijoch ’12 said that when he brought the Internet issue to an RCC, he was told that not enough students were using the Ethernet connection in their rooms and were instead relying on the wireless network.
“From my understanding, this overcrowding of the wireless network is making everyone’s connection slower,” Contijoch explained.
The RCC program could not be reached for comment.
Contijoch, who lives in Bloomberg, said the Internet is “remarkably slow” in the building, but he has recently been using the wired connection and has had no problems with its speed.
Cathy Chen ’14 said she also uses an Ethernet cord because she uses Skype frequently. However, she added that she still loses connection a couple times a night and has problems opening her email.
“It’s great that we have a wireless system set up, but it’s also limited to certain areas, mainly inside, which isn’t really a problem most of the year,” Chen said, adding that many of her friends receive little or no Internet connection from the south courtyard of Whitman.
The Office of Internet Techology has gathered data on Internet usage at various times and locations around campus. OIT Network Systems and Support Services manager Christopher Tengi explained that the data do not contain information about individual network connections or users and are strictly a measurement of the total amount of network traffic flowing through a particular link.
“There is no way to directly determine what network traffic at any location on (or off) campus is attributable to any specific class of network user or any specific network application using the statistics-gathering tools we have in place,” Tengi said. To do so, Tengi explained, OIT would need to guess how much of the traffic was due to student use versus non-student use.
But Tengi noted that his group has not received any complaints of slow connections.
OIT Associate Chief Information Officer and Director of Support Services Steven Sather suggested that students who experience slow network speeds from specific locations or at specific times of day report their problems to the OIT Support and Operations Center.
“OIT will investigate the issues and, if there is a problem, can address it most effectively that way,” he said.
Statistics released by OIT show that average Internet usage on campus peaks between 9 p.m. and midnight each night.
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