Inconsistencies arise in RESNET limitations

This letter is in response to the article from Thursday's Exponent entitled "Computer Problems Plague Universities." I have been waiting to hear some sort of attempt at an explanation for the poor performance of RESNET this year, and I guess this was it. Mr. Schwab claims that "with the top 5 percent of the users, we will throttle back the amount of the bandwidth they are using so that other users can use more." In my opinion, this is incorrect. I have downloaded as little as a couple hundred megabytes of information in one day and been "capped" so to say. This means I get 50% packet loss and very slow downloads, resulting in very poor performance from the Internet. A few hundred megabytes over a day's time should hardly be in the top 5 percent. Also, this "cap" lasts for hours, which does not add up to "throttling bandwidth," it adds to punishment for downloading large files. This would be akin to designing a car built to stop speeding, and causing a tire to fall off when you pass 55 mph, rather than simply limiting the speed the car can go. Also, why are speeds to the outside so slow for everyone if you are only limiting the top 5 percent of users? Online games are unplayable on servers outside of Purdue, and downloads are worse than dialup speeds. This is completely different from the past. I am sure they thought that by "reducing" the price of RESNET this year they wouldn't get complaints about the horrible performance of their product. Well, we all know the costs are built in to another bill somewhere. This is your notice, your customers are getting angrier by the day, and they won't let you get away with this much longer.

Brian Johnson

Senior, School of Technology

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