What Does Your Varsity Charge for Internet?

[hambone]

Most students I've met have huge libraries of movies, series and music... downloaded via their campus networks...

Yes, I believe this happens via the internal network - most universities would rather we didn't talk about that though. The content, in my experience on such matters, originates either from people using 'bypassing' the university proxy or from outside the university network. The former, trust me, is not something you want to get caught doing at a varsity with a clue.

Incorrect. Rhodes charges R1600 a year with a 3gb rolling threshold every 2 weeks

Thanks for the correction, it has been a while since I investigated these things at RU.

Find it funny that Maties charges their students for use of the internet when they are in partnership with the municipality and Mxit for the free wifi, and it just happens to be out of range of the Res's I was visiting Academia and they are hooked up to the universities network, tried to use my laptop but couldn't figure out how to get to the login page, as nothing would load. Please someone PM me how to setup a new computer for their students network, as I may be sending a new one down to a student if his laptop finally packs up :erm:

No nothing will load because you have to take your actual PC to the IT people and have it registered. There may however, be another way to register your MAC address yourself - I haven't heard of such a thing though.

 

[Segg]

Thanks, thought it must have been MAC filtering, if I do need to send down a PC I'll just clone the MAC address from the old laptop

 

[hambone]

Thanks, thought it must have been MAC filtering, if I do need to send down a PC I'll just clone the MAC address from the old laptop

Let me know if it works - I am sure it will

 

[Pada]

Incorrect. Rhodes charges R1600 a year with a 3gb rolling threshold every 2 weeks

That is pretty expensive.
What happens if you exceed that 3GB/2weeks?

My Internet bill was never above like R100pm when I was still at Stellenbosch University, because I got all the stuff from the local network. Then again, I had free 3G Internet and free Internet at the lab.

Find it funny that Maties charges their students for use of the internet when they are in partnership with the municipality and Mxit for the free wifi, and it just happens to be out of range of the Res's I was visiting Academia and they are hooked up to the universities network, tried to use my laptop but couldn't figure out how to get to the login page, as nothing would load. Please someone PM me how to setup a new computer for their students network, as I may be sending a new one down to a student if his laptop finally packs up :erm:

I started with the development of the Student IT setup application that would register the LAN & WiFi MAC addresses. These MAC addresses are then loaded into main IT's infrastructure that then activates (or deactivates) the port on the network switches according to the MAC address.

So if you're using an unregistered MAC address on IT's residential infrastructure, then it would automatically disable that switch port after a while. Then when you plug in a device with a registered MAC address, the switch port would then activate after a while.

There are always ways around this... but I'm not going to spill the beans here.

The Internet provided by the Municipality and MXit doesn't have near the same amount of bandwidth as the SANren 10Gbps connection that the Stellenbosch University has!
I'm actually not sure what kind of bandwidth MXit is offering for free, but I would presume that it is rather slow - like the free WiFi at Gino's.

 

[hambone]

That is pretty expensive.
What happens if you exceed that 3GB/2weeks?

When you reach 100% of that, you get shown a screen that tell you to wait 30 seconds before you can browser again. At 120% you are denied access to the internet. I am sure koeksGHT has more details about how it works these days.

My Internet bill was never above like R100pm when I was still at Stellenbosch University, because I got all the stuff from the local network. Then again, I had free 3G Internet and free Internet at the lab.

Crikey I wish we had that option - I tried downloading my imagery using my 1Mbps MWEB uncapped at home. When I saw it would take over a week to download I was pretty bleak. It took less than an hour on campus.

 

[Paul Hjul]

um I've checked with two current Rhodes students and the info posted by the University and no indication of any change to include an annual or any other charge emerges. There is an annual charge of about R1200 for student network access - the privilege of connecting your private computer to the network, but this isn't for internet access.

 

[hambone]

um I've checked with two current Rhodes students and the info posted by the University and no indication of any change to include an annual or any other charge emerges. There is an annual charge of about R1200 for student network access - the privilege of connecting your private computer to the network, but this isn't for internet access.

Thanks - I'd forgotten about the differentiation between per host/user quotas too.

So in sum, I reckon I'm getting shafted. It would seem that no other universities force people to pay per MB.

 

[Pseudonym]

UCT's system is pretty good, if a little difficult to set up the first time, depending on the device you're using. You have your student number and password and you can use this to log in to the network from anywhere via wireless or LAN cable. I have my phone connected to the wifi all day to save on data charges and I connect via my laptop when I need to do some work. For basic browsing and infrequent downloading (I download custom Android ROMs sometimes) the 3GB cap is more than enough and as far as I've experienced the don't block any ports or websites, however my friends in res tell me that Steam is blocked and obviously for them the 3GB is more restrictive.

 

[Zewp]

All I can say is that I'm very happy to be moving away from Stellenbosch at the end of the year. Something is terribly, terribly wrong when consumer products are cheaper than a universities'.

Indeed. I was considering dropping my Uncapped and moving to the university network, but then I realised if I were to download the same amount at the university as I did on my 384 uncapped, I'd be paying over R600 a month, whereas my Uncapped is R258.

The speeds are nice, though. Had to download a 700mb file on campus the other day, took a book to read while I waited for the DL to finish, but two minutes after the download started I was heading out the doors again.

 

[grim]

Spoke to my cousin that's studying at TUKS, they now get 12GB a year

 

[Zewp]

Spoke to my cousin that's studying at TUKS, they now get 12GB a year

A year or a month? I have a hard time believing any University would be giving their students only 1gb a month. Jeeze.

TUKS, the 90s called, they want their data thresholds back.

 

[grim]

A year or a month? I have a hard time believing any University would be giving their students only 1gb a month. Jeeze.

TUKS, the 90s called, they want their data thresholds back.

A year, last year it was still 500MB a year, yes a year.

 

[Zewp]

A year, last year it was still 500MB a year, yes a year.

Wow, that's pretty low. One would expect a bit bigger data allocations from one of the bigger universities in SA.

 

[hambone]

A year, last year it was still 500MB a year, yes a year.

Wow, that's pretty low. One would expect a bit bigger data allocations from one of the bigger universities in SA.

Even 1GB per month is madness! I'd rather keep paying though my teeth than be limited to 1GB a month o_0