University connection is incredibly slow

[timmay28]

My school's internet is so slow that you only have about a 50% success rate in pulling up any webpage, otherwise it gives a "server not found" message. Well this impacts my poker playing as well. On FTP last night I was in two MTT's in which I really liked my chances of winning some good loot, but in the middle of them the connection crawled to a halt, and I blinded out right before the bubble in both.

I wrote to the university about their chitty internet but didn't receive a reply, and several other guys on campus said they too have written, no response.

I'm not sure if I have a particular question other than to ask what would you guys do at this point. My system is less than a year old, spyware free, no viruses, well taken care of. The school offers a wireless network, so maybe it might go faster if I bought one of those wireless-g usb adapters instead of using the regular cable connection? Anyway, if anyone wants to offer any ideas at all I'd love to hear them.

[funkyworms]

What are your SpeedTest stats? Post them here.

The only way to get anything done with this is to show them that their network is unreasonably slow and unreliable. Write letters to the administration, too. Petition the student body to see if they have the same complaints. Don't rely on the IT department to do anything because they don't control the funds to make the network better.

[funkyworms]

I assumed that you weren't using any p2p clients or torrents while your connection was acting up. If you were, you can speed up your connection by not using them.

[timmay28]

No, not using anything in the background except AVG, windows sidebar, and objectdock plus. Speedtest.net put it at 706 kb/s dl, 926 kb/s ul, which I guess isn't god awful compared to the national average that speedtest has listed for the U.S. Still, even at this speed, only half the pages attempted are successful without having to hit refresh again. I think the school's server gets especially clogged up around 8:00-10:00; I'll try testing again during those hours. Unfortunately for me, those hours are about the earliest I can start a tournament unless I want to pull an all nighter and sleep in class the next day.

[ispiked]

From my experience, this is usually caused by some idiot that is downloading twenty or so torrents non-stop and is severely "clogging the tubes". Hopefully your school's IP department has a way to find out who these users are.

The best idea is to keep complaining until something gets done. It would be good, however, to confirm that it is indeed not just your computer that's experiencing the problems. Get one of your friends to bring their laptop and try plugging into your wall switch.

[nuclear500]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't rely on the IT department to do anything because they don't control the funds to make the network better.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, but they do know what is part of the acceptable use policy and if someone is pounding the puny 100Mb network switch (not hard) they will cut them off.