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You never know what you have until it's gone...
18 years ago
Since some time late last year (around December, I'd say), it became apparent that the University of Stirling's 'virtual private network' (i.e. internet access in the student residences) was suffering some problems with bandwidth. Too many users using too much of it, with the unfortunate effect of web pages not loading, MSN Messenger signing out unexpectedly (or refusing to sign in in the first place), or the network itself going down, leaving the entire campus unable to connect.
The ICT department assured us that this problem was going to be fixed. Students using the internet to transfer large amounts of music files on peer to peer programs or playing online games would be temporarily banned to discourage the practice and free up bandwidth for the less demanding students. Why do this? I don't know. If I were in their position, I'd try and provide more bandwidth before I ban some people for using too much.
Well, this all happened late last year before I went home for Christmas, and I had hoped that by this time the problems would have been solved. They haven't been. Indeed, over the last week especially they have simply gotten worse every day (or so it seems). In fact, right now this is the best connection I've had for several days. Web pages are loading without failure, MSN is up and running, and has been for about ten to fifteen minutes now, with just one minor hiccough when I signed in. It is a complete reversal of the situation last night, where in the end I was unable to load a single web page, to say nothing of signing into MSN Messenger. I'm lucky I was able to update my website just before these problems started.
This past week has been very frustrating and the ICT department hasn't been that helpful, although the lady at the help desk was good enough to file my complaint for me today, whereas the other day, the lady at the desk simply brushed me off with the same information about bandwidth that we'd all been told via email twice already. And to add to insult to injury, she gave me an email address I could complain to. Yeah, great help there... if I could actually load hotmail.co.uk. At least today, I was asked to describe the problems so that they could be recorded and filed as an official complaint.
Isn't it ironic that the network is okay right now? I hope it stays that way, because, as sad as it sounds, most of what I do revolves around internet access and the internet is how I stay in touch with most of my friends too.
The ICT department assured us that this problem was going to be fixed. Students using the internet to transfer large amounts of music files on peer to peer programs or playing online games would be temporarily banned to discourage the practice and free up bandwidth for the less demanding students. Why do this? I don't know. If I were in their position, I'd try and provide more bandwidth before I ban some people for using too much.
Well, this all happened late last year before I went home for Christmas, and I had hoped that by this time the problems would have been solved. They haven't been. Indeed, over the last week especially they have simply gotten worse every day (or so it seems). In fact, right now this is the best connection I've had for several days. Web pages are loading without failure, MSN is up and running, and has been for about ten to fifteen minutes now, with just one minor hiccough when I signed in. It is a complete reversal of the situation last night, where in the end I was unable to load a single web page, to say nothing of signing into MSN Messenger. I'm lucky I was able to update my website just before these problems started.
This past week has been very frustrating and the ICT department hasn't been that helpful, although the lady at the help desk was good enough to file my complaint for me today, whereas the other day, the lady at the desk simply brushed me off with the same information about bandwidth that we'd all been told via email twice already. And to add to insult to injury, she gave me an email address I could complain to. Yeah, great help there... if I could actually load hotmail.co.uk. At least today, I was asked to describe the problems so that they could be recorded and filed as an official complaint.
Isn't it ironic that the network is okay right now? I hope it stays that way, because, as sad as it sounds, most of what I do revolves around internet access and the internet is how I stay in touch with most of my friends too.
