UCT to cap students internet access

[cda]

*sigh* Alright I just had to really reregister to clear up some points here.

Firslty the Universities pay Telkom at a discounted rate for a CIR connection to TENet (This is not diginet as someone incorrectly said).

I will speak of UKZN, which i a 9,488 Kbps backbone circuit. Most students are allocated 50MB per month or something, and as with most of the other universities this is not enforced and is done as a deterant. With around 5000 computers, the biggest bandwidth chewing is done by people playing around and not using the resource for its intended purpose (Stuff like vodacom4me.co.za and people playing with flash games etc). I've often used much more than the allocated amount on my student account and it's never been a problem and when it was I just asked for more and it was reset. Otherwise I use a research facility which gives unrestricted usage.

TENet themselves have a 148,664 Kbps allocated international bandwidth, which is shared between the universities depending on the CIR for each university. This currently runs at around 50% capacity, so there is certainly not a lack of bandwidth.

As for cost, I can again only speak of UKZN which pays approximatly R4mi per year for its connectivity charges. It's adequte for the purposes of the LAN facilities and if you've experienced slow connectivity or limited access its most likely because you're not actualy doing a degree which is deemed to require it as much as other faculties. Recently the costs came down, some like UCT opted for a higher CIR, others opted for the cost saving.

 

[JayT]

Some interesting info from the TENet website

Traffic graphs: http://www.tenet.ac.za/mrtg-new/graphs.asp

UCT
International Traffic: This is a 12,800 Kbps connection.
http://www.tenet.ac.za/mrtg-new/uct-mc-ipnet-int.html

National Traffic: This is a 2,816 Kbps connection.
http://www.tenet.ac.za/mrtg-new/uct-mc-ipnet-nat.html

Backbone Traffic: This is a 16,640 Kbps connection.

University of Stellenbosch
Backbone Traffic: This is a 12,996 Kbps connection.
International Traffic: This is a 9,352 Kbps connection.
National Traffic: This is a 3,040 Kbps connection.

University of KwaZulu-Natal
Backbone Traffic: This is a 9,488 Kbps connection.
International Traffic: This is a 7,952 Kbps connection.
National Traffic: This is a 2,440 Kbps connection.

 

[ambo]

Firslty the Universities pay Telkom at a discounted rate for a CIR connection to TENet (This is not diginet as someone incorrectly said).

Sorry - my bad Whats a CIR?

 

[JayT]

CIR = "Committed Information Rate"

 

[DVDA]

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the country sucks on the research and science fronts because the varsity labs won't allow you to download the lastest episodes of Lost. I'm sure if you are a serious research/postgrad student, you can have all the bandwidth you want. I personally know a girl who studied her undergrad degree in Genetics from UCT, got invited to Oxford to get her Doctorate, and is now being headhunted by Harvard Medical Center. So please, let's not make sweeping generalisations about the state of our countries research and science capabilities because the word "cap" is included in the news article.

This capping is undoubtedly limited to undergrads who spend their free time in the labs using MSN and email, hogging seats where people could be doing actual work.

This kind of kneejerk reaction to news articles is getting really old.

 

[Turtle]

I'm sure if you are a serious research/postgrad student, you can have all the bandwidth you want. ... So please, let's not make sweeping generalisations about the state of our countries research and science capabilities because the word "cap" is included in the news article.

...

This kind of kneejerk reaction to news articles is getting really old.

I personally was involved with some actual "serious research" at a major university last year by none other than the head of a department, never mind just a student, as well as an international guest researcher working on a PhD, and we had to download a few gigs of data for the research --- he had to pay over R5000 out of his OWN POCKET for it! He tried to get compensated and they refused. So excuse me if I don't quite buy the "can have all the bandwidth you want" theory. Oh, and the university made money again off the resulting research publications too.

 

[DVDA]

Which university?

 

[JayT]

Sounds like a Pta sort of thing to do. Not CT

 

[Moederloos]

I agree with DVDA. It does not take much imagination to see a bunch of students abusing internet connections in a university. And yes, "abuse" here is correctly used - the university provides links for valid institutional use, not for downloading a videocam copy of King Kong.

 

[kobie]

UCT is so painfully slow I find it hard to believe that anyone is able to seriously abuse it.

 

[NameOfBeast]

Ok, why not put a transparent proxy in place that allows access to specific resources, and blocks undesirably content [i.e. the "abuse" of bandwidth] - can be controlled by using dynamically updated blocklists, and if some access is necessary then shape according to predefined ports...

If my IPCop box can do all that and lots more, then why can universities not do the same? and why limit to a rediculous 50MB per student per month?

Most likely because the network people don't have a clue; at wits there is rampant abuse of library PCs (you have not experienced rage till you've waited ten minutes to do a book search while some dumbass sends email to his mate two terminals away). The networking people tried to implement blocking sites, and for a time managed to block access to the frigging wits library homepage and all the online databases (and cretin undergrads were *still* able to hotmai!).

 

[DVDA]

@ kobie: UCT is painfully slow *because* people are able to seriously abuse it. The network management is not exactly that great, and from what I hear, the lab technicians and net admins are the culprits.
*cough* CompSci lab *cough*

 

[AndrewAlston]

A couple of comments on this one. Lets look at some facts.

TENET Graphs (where all the tertiary education institutions) get their bandwidth from, show UCT as having a 16.6mbit link. Of this, 12.8mbit is international, 2.8mbit is national, and 1mbit is backbone (reserved for inter-tertiary education)

Now, lets consider, approximately 10 thousand active nodes on the network, do the maths on kbit/second should all of those be active at once.

Further more, if you look further on the TENET website, look at the GEANT graph, that is the line through which all research traffic flows, despite what the graph says, thats not actually limited, it forms part of the main traffic, look at the amount of educational traffic from those institutions versus the amount of generic internet access.

So, what conclusions can we draw from this.

First of all, there simply isnt enough bandwidth to continue to allow a free for all, a pipe that size costs multiple millions a year, funds at institutions arent unlimited.

Secondly, when there is between an 8:1 and a 10:1 traffic ratio of generic internet access versus actual academic related access, we have to ask ourselves, are the educational institutions simply trying to protect their resources and their primary objectives, to provide service that is educationally related, and eliminate the traffic that is unrelated to education.

I would argue, that while capping is a sad sad thing, and very unfortunate in this country, in the case of academic institutions at this point, there is very little option, as they cannot afford much faster links than they already have due to the insane prices of a certain incumbent monopoly, at the same time they have to provide a service for education. Its only by capping the general internet access that they can have bandwidth available for the legitimate research and development purposes for which it is purchased.

Believe me, Im not a fan of capping students, or of charging per meg, or any of those other measures, but I am also quite prepared to stand and say that an institution has to protect its investment, and make sure that the investment is being used for what was paid for.

Student fees are high, attending a top class university costs a fortune, surely a student who is paying those fees is entitled to reasonable speed internet access for the purposes of research and development. Without the capping, they simply dont get it, as people sit and download whatever they want, and everyone suffers.

The fact is, there simply isnt enough bandwidth, and the fight shouldnt be with the institutions on this one, it should be with the source of the problem, the insane price of telecommunications in this country. The institutions in my opinon are simply trying to do the best they can with virtually no resource.

All graphs I've referred to by the way can be found at http://www.tenet.ac.za/mrtg-new/graphs.asp

Anyway, these are just some thoughts

 

[JayT]

UCT as having a 16.6mbit link. Of this, 12.8mbit is international, 2.8mbit is national, and 1mbit is backbone (reserved for inter-tertiary education)

Now, lets consider, approximately 10 thousand active nodes on the network, do the maths on kbit/second should all of those be active at once.

There are reasons why 16.6Mbit is for international and only 2.8Mbit for national. If I look at my monthly traffic, the only national traffic I have is:
1. This site
2. junk mail from intekom
3. news24
4. irc

All other traffic is international. MSN, torrents, my hosting, email, google etc etc etc. During peak times when the students are busy, I've found that each user is capped at around 8K/sec. Currently the sentech speed tests are around 800K/sec (2MB test) which isnt slow. If you take the 16.6Mbit connection, 265 people could download 8K/sec continously. This should not be happening as research involves searching, opening a page and reading / printing... Not continously downloading.

Inspite of this, the UCT graphs show that there is still bandwidth available, which means any slow speeds are a result of the bandwidth being controlled by UCT and not because of too many users all downloading

 

[ambo]

...look at the GEANT graph, that is the line through which all research traffic flows, despite what the graph says, thats not actually limited, it forms part of the main traffic, look at the amount of educational traffic from those institutions versus the amount of generic internet access.

I'm not exactly sure what this GEANT link is carrying - my guess is the exchange of online journals and libraries. But don't for one moment think that this is all the research that is happening on campuses.
In first year - we are told to do tutorials on using the library catalogue... and google. By second year - almost the only thing the library is used for is a quiet study area (i speak for myself in engineering - its not the same with everyone) and we are encouraged to do our own research and investigation on the internet for answers to any questions we may have before consulting with lecturers...
My class also has a well established forum based on overseas servers that we use a lot for assisting each other with questions...
When i'm in the programming labs - i don't carry a huge C++ reference book with me anymore. I just have a copy of Firefox going behind my IDE so i can check a syntax in a matter of seconds rather than minutes googling through a paper book...
All of this is perfectly valid research that is being chanelled over the general internet. And while i agree that is not all that students use internet for, it will form a healthy portion.

at wits there is rampant abuse of library PCs (you have not experienced rage till you've waited ten minutes to do a book search while some dumbass sends email to his mate two terminals away). The networking people tried to implement blocking sites, and for a time managed to block access to the frigging wits library homepage and all the online databases (and cretin undergrads were *still* able to hotmai!).

But don't jump to conclusions about what people are doing on the pc's - i email my mates all the time... and often in one of the other labs just a few hundred metres away - exchanging project work while we work.

Something that is intruiging however: I'm not sure exactly what the size of the student population is at UCT - but i know its less than the 25 000-odd that we have at wits. Yet they are using 1.5 times the bandwidth that we do... Maybe their new capping system policy is not such a bad idea
*ducks - runs for cover*

 

[AndrewAlston]

Just some more clarification

I'm not exactly sure what this GEANT link is carrying - my guess is the exchange of online journals and libraries. But don't for one moment think that this is all the research that is happening on campuses.
In first year - we are told to do tutorials on using the library catalogue... and google. By second year - almost the only thing the library is used for is a quiet study area (i speak for myself in engineering - its not the same with everyone) and we are encouraged to do our own research and investigation on the internet for answers to any questions we may have before consulting with lecturers...

This is not actually accurate, the GEANT link carries all traffic to all educational institutions in Europe, and to all educational institutions linked to the Abeline/Internet2 system. This means, if you are doing your own research on google, hit a site thats hosted by an educational institution, you will go via this link. You'd be amazed at how much material is actually hosted by these sites

Inspite of this, the UCT graphs show that there is still bandwidth available, which means any slow speeds are a result of the bandwidth being controlled by UCT and not because of too many users all downloading

I might point out the time of the year and the graphs you are looking at, there are no students on any university campus at the moment other than postgrads, the undergrads are all at home, using their adsl lines. Thats why the graphs show there is free bandwidth, go back a coupla months and look at the day time graphs. Yes the daily average graphs will show a dip every day, thats in the middle of the night, the daily graphs are flatlined every day during term time though.