03-14-2007, 02:20 AM

This is definitely the straw that has broken the camel's back as far as me transferring out of this place goes.

My school has 1 (read: ONE) T3 for the entire population. Yeah, a T3 is fast, but for 1200 people? Considering that most people are idiots and have Limewire, Morpheus, Bonzi Buddy, Myspace Instant messenger, Ares, Kazaa, AOL instant messenger, AOL itself, and a million more things installed, clearly the network is going to run like $#!&.

Considering that and the fact that the T3's maximum bandwidth is 5.5920MB/sec, there is going to be a clear bottleneck.

Out network administrator (a 60 something year old man) is convinced that we have a groin-grabbingly fast network and internet connection even though I, as a member of the computer services department, tell him daily that the actual usability of the net is crap for the average student. They have tried a few different things to help ease the load on the network such as

1) Put an extreme limit on all ports except HTTP (80) and SMTP (21 I think). You can imagine my reaction when I transfered here this past fall and tried to play any game.

2) Track which IP addresses are using a lot of bandwidth and making a lot of external connections and blocking them until the person came in to find out why there was no net for them.

3) Implementing Cisco's Clean Access software, a program designed to deny access to the network unless a machine has a) an updated antivirus, b) user credentials, and c) all windows updates (funny that my Macbook doesn't really fit two of those three categories).

Starting yesterday, a new policy was enacted: Every single IP on campus is limited to 20TCP, 10UDP, and 5 embryonic connections to the outside world. 20TCP sounds like more than enough you might say, and normally I would agree when considering simple web browsing, but consider the following situation:

A person is sitting at their computer preparing to play a 4v4 match in Company of Heroes. They boot up Windows XP and log in. At that point their Antivirus/Firewall/Windows Updates begins to check for updates and/or monitor traffic. They then open Ventrilo or TeamSpeak and connect to a server. They then open Company of Heroes and log into the online lobby. At this point things seem to be running as they should. The user enters the game room where 8 players are being assembled. They and three of their friends sit on one team waiting for strangers to join the other team. After 5 minutes of no one joining, the user's friends start to notice a consistent error message: "blablaUser could not connect to OurUser'sName" A quick netstat will reveal that OH NO!, all 20 TCP connections are already in use with the voice software and Company of Heroes connecting each player to each player. Connections coming in after the initial 20 are just put in a queue and wait for an open slot.

Dismayed, our user tries another game, and another game, and another game until finally he finds 1 out of 10 of his games that actually only use one connection.

On a network that already disappoints consistently for reliability, this is just absurd. I'm getting a big "Ho Hum" about having my IP given less restrictions (something that I fought for for weeks about the restricted ports issue). Sorry Ferrum College, I guess that it's time to transfer to VTech and bask in a couple of OC-12s

Sorry to the fine people of Mac-Forums for my steaming rant, now I feel a little better

03-14-2007, 10:32 AM

We had a fractional T3 last symester. Network was always down. I could get faster connections at home with my DSL that is slower than most DSL since we were past the recommended usage range.

Last symester was horrible. My roommate is a wow addict, and he always raids, he couldnt raid alot, cuz he would always lag out. But now we have a full T3. Theres only about 500 students in the dorms, with at most 1200 people on campus during the day.

03-14-2007, 11:07 AM

A t3's bandwidth is greater than 5.5 megs... I am a technician for AT&T, working on everything from POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) all the way up the hierarchal fiber line, up to and including OC192's (192 T3's on 1 fiber strand).

A T1 is 1.544 Mbps, both directions. There are 28 T1's in a T3, which = 44.73Mbps (factoring in SONET overhead for EC and other admin functions).

I would, however, agree that a T3 for that many people (a college full) that more than likely the majority have laptops, is a bit sparse. 2 T3's would be more prudent, but footing the bill for 1 T3 is a money sink. Even the small CC that I attend has multple T3's and they don't have dorms...

03-14-2007, 11:36 AM

I understand what you are saying, but that is 44.73 Megabits, versus 5.5920 Megabytes. A big difference right? Just like bandwidth to my computer is restricted to 460kbps which turns out to be around 50KB/s

03-14-2007, 12:01 PM

Thats my schools network setup. You can feel a little lag in peak hours since there are no commuters and everybody is in the dorms, but most of the time you get around 10mbps

03-14-2007, 12:13 PM

Is that Hamilton College in Clinton NY?

03-14-2007, 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by StretchR

Is that Hamilton College in Clinton NY?

tis..