Dana,

President Yudof referred your concern to me.  First let me apologize for the
service disruption to the network and the confusing information provided by
OIT units.  This situation should have been handle much better and I promise
OIT will make appropriate adjustments.

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 resident halls to consume up to 50% of the total campus internet
capacity even though the resident 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 like 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.

The major mistake we made was not informing students that this testing was
going on.  So you are correct, we left students in the dark.  This was a
serious mistake and I promise that OIT will take the appropriate steps to
improve communication procedures.  I believed we failed at both the internal
level of communications between OIT engineers and OIT help desk personnel as
well as communicating with the users of the network.

I do want to make a point about cost because I think it is important that
our customers understand the comparative value of our services.  The charge
per resident hall connection is $14 per month (FY03 OIT rates) compared with
residential high speed internet service that cost between $34.95 to $39.95
per month (see techmart.umn.edu).  And let me assure you that student
technology fees do not pay for residential hall network service nor do they
cover any costs related to residential hall network service, so there is no
double charging.

In closing, let me reaffirm OIT's commitment to the delivery of exceptional
services and provide you with my personal commitment to aggressively address
any service deficiencies.

Sincerely,

Steve Cawley
Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer
University of Minnesota
cawley@umn.edu