Students on campus don't often wonder about how or why their connection to the Internet works. They do however care a lot when they can't get online to chat with friends or check their e-mail. I work for Network Services on campus, and I can say first hand that most people treat their connection like a light switch. They want to turn it on and have it work; if it doesn't then they just get frustrated. However they don't know about the miles of cable that had to be installed and connected through various routers. Today computers are becoming common in homes, job sites, and college campuses yet most people know little about how they work.

I am guilty of knowing little in the grand scheme of things about how computers work because they a very complex things. That is why I was curious about how our campus network with its Ethernet and thousands of dollars of high tech equipment could still be as slow as a line at the financial aid office. I wrote my last article on the summer improvements to the network, yet things still seem to be bogged down. Why is this?

For starters, there are approximately 2500 students with computers, 2000 faculty machines, and lab computers all connected to the campus network. During the regular school week the campus servers are dividing their total capacity to transfer information among all these machines. Next, you have to consider the fact that no machine is perfect. In the bottom of Jefferson and McConnell library there are whole rooms of cables, power generators, and machines that somehow combine and work together. Any foul up in one piece of equipment could take down the entire network temporarily.

What happens if the network goes down? The campus network uses a DS3 connection as its primary system, and, if that one goes down, they switch to a back up T1 connection. However, the T1 only allows 1.5 megabits, while the DS3 allows 43 megabits of resources to be divided among users. That is a drastic reduction if the main system experiences a glitch. Academic Computing and Network Services are looking into finding a faster, cost effective backup for the future. How do I know what is up and what has crashed? Academic Computing has provided a handy link for you to check.

Another important aspect is to realize that everything in Virginia runs through a SprintLink Router, which is located in DC. From there you are able to access Internet sites from the rest of the country or world. Click here to see a diagram of it. The company that services Virginia is called www.networkvirginia.net. They interconnect other colleges, hospitals, government facilities, and countless other businesses. All of Virginia's Internet traffic is bottle-necking just like a highway traffic jam at the DC point. As for the DC interchange, they are also in the process of upgrading their communication lines, such as installing fiber optic cable and faster routers to supply better quality service.