Residence Hall Students,

I would like to address recent concerns about network service in the
residential halls.  First let us apologize for the service disruptions that
occurred February 15 through February 18.

The Office of Information Technology provides network access for the entire
campus community. All campus buildings, including all residential halls,
share the same network service.  Our commitment is to provide the
residential halls with a network service that matches or exceeds service
provided by residential high-speed internet service providers, such as cable
modem service and DSL service, at a fraction of the cost. In fact we allow
the residential halls to consume up to 50% of the total campus internet
capacity even though the residential halls represent less than 20% of the total
connections.

The University of Minnesota manages a shared internet connection with the
State of Minnesota and the MNSCU schools, and is responsible for managing
the University of Minnesota network traffic patterns so as to not disrupt
the internet access of our state partners and our campus community.  The
University is assigned 100 Megabits of a shared total of 200 megabits of
internet bandwidth.  As the network usage on campus has grown, we have
received complaints from our state partners and our campus users who are
unable to complete their work due to network congestion. To remedy these
problems and improve network service, the University is in the process of
purchasing additional internet bandwidth and has started to use network
management tools, including one called Packeteer. These tools are used to
manage the smooth flow of network traffic.  Many other universities and ISPs
around the nation use these tools for the same purpose.

Last week, during a testing phase of Packeteer, we encountered some
technical difficulties, which affected the network performance for all users
on the Twin Cities Campuses. These technical problems were eventually
identified and corrected. No changes were made to the network service for
anyone on campus including residential halls users. We will continue to use
these tools to monitor the traffic on the network and to provide solutions
for the growing use of available internet bandwidth.

OIT help desk personnel had a difficult time addressing student calls during
this most recent period of service difficulty.  In general the situation was
handled poorly and for that we apologize.  In the future we promise to do a
better job of informing students when testing our maintenance activity might
affect service and OIT will work to better prepare help desk staff to deal
with situations like this one.

Sincerely,

Steve Cawley
Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer