I am in my 3rd year at Penn State, and I have always had problems with the internet Penn State provides. I have complained a few times to their support team “rescom”, but they do not care. Not only is the internet speed very slow depending on the time, and at times unbearable, they also have bandwidth limits on the internet usage per person that lives on the college campus.
First of all, they limit your internet usage to 2 gigabytes per week. That means you cannot upload or download more than 2 gigabytes of data per week. If you do, they put you on what is called “shared 56k limit” for the remainder of the week, until the system is reset. If you go over their 2 gigabyte limit more than 3 times, you will be placed on permanent 56k for the remainder of the semester. Believe me, when you are on the “shared 56k” nothing EVER loads. I tried loading yahoo.com and it took over 60 seconds to load! Which is ridiculous.
If you are like me, who uses the internet very heavily, you know 2 gigabytes is nothing! Even a regular user can go over 2 gigabytes in a single week. Especially, if you go on youtube and watch a few videos, and that is something normal users do! And, that would easily eat up your bandwidth.
The funny thing is…. if you have a laptop, and you bring into the school buildings for the wireless access, the speed is BLAZING fast! I was once downloading a file at around 800 kb/s. The internet usage on the wireless network is unrestricted, that does not count towards your bandwidth. However, the apartment I am paying for on campus, has restricted internet. It is the biggest BS ever. Seriously….
You probably guessed it, I just recently went over my bandwidth limit. The reason I was unable to update for the last few days, was because I had gone over the bandwidth limit after Thursday. I didn’t even download any big files, it was mainly just from regular surfing around the net.
I have around 15-16 more weeks to go of college this semester, and I only have 2 more strikes for the internet. It is going to be awfully hard to avoid another bandwidth violation.
Speed Test
I recently did a speed test during a non-peak time for internet usage.
Now, 429 kb/s in this case, is 429 kilobits per second, which is roughly 50 kilobytes per second. Can you imagine how slow it would be during the peak time?
To give you an example, if you attempt to stream a video on youtube, you will be buffering, and waiting for it to load, for a long time! Once, I left a video to load on youtube, and went to shower, by the time I came out of the shower, the video was 75% loaded. The video was only 9 minutes.
Email Issues
When I first arrived on campus, when I was a freshman. Checking my email through my Thunderbird application was not a problem. However, whenever I tried sending out email, my smtp server kept being denied access. It was a real bummer, and I was forced to use a webmail for the time being to send out my email. I called up rescom, and after talking to so many people, who had no clue what smtp was, I finally go through with someone. Apparently Penn State blocks, any kind of smtp relays.
The solution, I had to use the penn state smtp relay, and I would just mask the from email portion.
Final Note
Keep in mind that I am paying to live on campus, I am paying for Penn State Housing. If I was getting free housing, or free internet from the school, than that would be a totally different issue. But the fact that I am paying to live on campus, and that I get a low service like I do, is pretty pathetic if you ask me.
Do you have any horrible internet problems?
Do you know of any other schools that have BAD internet? Share your story, I would love to hear it.
Do you think I am within reason to complain or be mad? Give me your opinion!
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That is bull dude! I would take it up and make a big story out of it, really. I use 1GB a day and don’t watch any movies or crap like that.
Good luck with this hey!
[...] Jean Costa wrote an interesting post today on Penn State Internet is HellHere’s a quick excerptTo give you an example, if you attempt to stream a video on youtube, you will be buffering, and waiting for it to load, for a long time! Once, I left a video to load on youtube, and went to shower, by the time I came out of the shower, … [...]
Well,
I went to university over in the UK and we never got restrictions on anything, in our apartments or in computers on campus. Was great, but they spent a hell of a lot on IT though - and they really wanted to give students ‘unrestricted’ access to information - great if you ask me.
2 gigabytes per week is shocking, especially when you’re paying for it!
That really is pretty harsh. I can understand them wanting to limit bandwidth to a degree (I don’t agree, but I understand the reasoning). Imagine how many minutes the average MMO player could get in before grinding to a halt (no pun intended).
You have every right to be angry, especially if you are paying to live in a campus apartment that is separate from the dorms.
Ha ha! My university’s internet connection is unrestricted, but sadly not as fast.
Since your paying for it, yes I would be mad and would raise a serious stink!
Good luck with this.
Another bandwidth violation…..
One more and my internet is permanently restricted to shared 56k hosting.
Yeah, I’m at the Behrend campus it’s absolutely terrible. It seems almost like they have a set bandwidth limit for the residence halls per day once that limit is reached you get slow connections all day till almost exactly 5:00pm. Effectively causing unbearable speed from 11:00am till 5:00pm. I can’t get anything done during the day in my room. Currently me and some kids down the hall are trying to get a Cantenna so we can get the wireless signal to ignore the bandwidth restrictions, but even then the wireless is rather sketchy because you have to go through a VPN client which will disconnect often or even sometimes never let you get connected.
I am also a student at Behrend
Actually the reason why you see those sluggish and unbearable speeds during those hours is because they throttle down the bandwidth between the hours of 10 am and 5pm in the dorms. The bandwidth allowed is almost 1/3 of its true speed. Their supposed theory is, is that students should be in the classrooms during those hours, so there should not be any internet usage.
I have also been thinking of methods of how I can possibly pick up the wireless network since it does not count towards bandwidth limits.
That is terrible internet
Yes I agree!
Well they have increased the bandwidth limits to 4 gigabytes download per week, pretty good news. I guess blogging about it helps, doesn’t it? hehe
i am going to behrend in a couple weeks, i know they said something about a limit? how do you measure what you have used?
is there any way to do xbox live with 4gb, or will it eat that like nothing?
Hey Randy,
I had a roommate who used his xbox live, and he was fine. The xbox doesn’t really consume that much of the bandwidth. Unless you are downloading demos, etc on it. Otherwise, you should be fine.
Just be aware, that usually from 10am to 5pm the internet speed is super slow in the dorms. That is because they throttle the bandwidth down to the dorms during those hours, to allocate more bandwidth to the classrooms, and other locations. Sometimes it gets really bad, where pages on the internet load really slow.
ok, how do you keep track of how much you are using? is there a way?
i appreciate the help. Thanks
You’re welcome! I don’t know how heavy of an internet user you are, but if you are a heavy internet user, you will find out that the penn state network is pretty poor when it comes to speeds, and load times.
Anyways, you can go to http://www.rescom.psu.edu and from there, on the right hand side there is a link called “Bandwidth Consumption”.
do behrend and university park have the same regulations do you know?
i would mainly be doing madden and halo on 360? are you pretty sure playing those a couple times a week should not be a problem? thanks for all the help
Yeah I am pretty sure its the same regulations.
I think you will be fine, and should not go over the bandwidth limits by playing those 2 games. I have had roommates, who have played halo everyday, and they did not go over their bandwidth. But like I said, during the time of 10am to 5pm on a school day, you can expect the internet to be usually slower.
i talked to penn state and they said it states in the housing contract not to use any deviced except a computer on their network or i violate the agreement.
Are they really gonna know?
Nah dude, they won’t know.
All you do is, use a router. But, use a non-wireless router. They don’t like wireless routers, they will catch those. But alot of people do it in the dorms. Everyone who has an xbox hooked up, uses a router. It’s no big deal.