RU Slowing Down RU's Network?
					Technical Assistance (831-7500)
Why is it SLOW?		Bandwidth		Disabling Sharing		The Law		RU Portal

What is “Bandwidth”? Bandwidth refers to the amount of information that can flow across the network at a given moment. The more bandwidth available, the faster your downloads and page access will be. How much “Internet Bandwidth” does Radford University have? At the present time, Radford University maintains two DS3 connections to the Internet. One DS3 connection is through Network Virginia and the other is through COVANET. This provides a maximum Internet Connection capacity of 90 megabits per second. Prior to the Summer of 2002, Radford University only had one DS3 connection to the Internet. In order to fund the second DS3 a partnership between Radford University, Radford City, and Radford City Schools was formed. The 90 megabits of available bandwidth is allocated as follows: 5 megabits - Radford University Video Classrooms (Distance Education) 55 megabits - Radford University Internet Traffic 15 megabits - Radford City 15 megabits - Radford City Schools How is our bandwidth managed? During the summer of 2001, Radford University installed a Paketeer PacketShaper 6500 to identify and prioritize network traffic and help regulate bandwidth. Prior to the installation of this device, Peer to Peer (P2P) applications such as Napster, Kazaa and Audio Galaxy were consuming virtually all of the available bandwidth and there was no remaining bandwidth for those users trying to conduct legitimate educational activities. The PaketShaper allows RU to set limits on particular parts of the network or on particular applications to better distribute bandwidth. The PacketShaper basically looks at every incoming and outgoing network packet and determines what application is sending this packet, where the packet originated from and then limits the bandwidth appropriately. Of the 55 megabits of bandwidth Radford University has available, the residence halls are guaranteed 20 megabits of burstable bandwidth. (This means that if other campus users are not using the remaining 35 megabits that the residence hall users can take up to the full 55 megabits.) Within that 20 megabit guarantee, there is a 10 megabit hard limit that keeps incoming P2P traffic from exceeding 10 megabits of our total bandwidth. There is also 5 megabit limit on outgoing P2P traffic. The outgoing P2P traffic is primarily composed of off campus users connecting to student computers and downloading files from residence hall computers. If the Packeteer is turned off, all of Radford University bandwidth is almost immediately consumed by outgoing P2P traffic. Does this mean that Radford University monitors the web sites users visit? NO! Absolutely not. The PacketShaper classifies packets automatically and does not log each individual web access. It does keep up with the computers that are "Top" bandwidth users so we can better recognize users that may be abusing their available bandwidth.

Thanks for your help in improving Radford's Internet connection speeds.

Last Updated October 21, 2002 Ed Oakes