From: Mark Yudof myudof@umn.edu
To: 
Cc: kvavik@umn.edu ; cawley@oit.umn.edu
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 8:43 AM
Subject: 5,800 University Students Kept in the Dark by University Dept.


Dana, I have no knowledge of this matter, but I will ask Steve Cawley, 
our Chief Information Officer, to get back to you on this. MGY





  This email is in regards to Networking and Telecommunications Services 
not informing 5,800 of its network subscribers, each student living in a 
University Residence Hall or Apartment Complex, of a change in service 
before or after being implemented.  For clarification in this email, I 
am a Senior living in one of the aforementioned buildings on campus.  
There have been network difficulties in the past two weeks and an 
apparent "slow-down" of our internet services.  When we call the 
Academic and Distributed Computing Services, they lead us to believe 
that it is something we are doing, or our computer that is the reason 
for the slowdown.  In actuality, NTS has installed a regulatory device 
called a "Packeteer" between the Res Hall's network connections and the 
rest of the University's network.  This device limits the amount of 
bandwidth in which students living on-campus have access to.  I 
discovered this device was implemented from documentation given to me by 
an ADCS employee.  If it was NTS's decision to implement this change in 
service, is it not recommended, or mandatory, to inform those that it 
would affect?  Where they ever going to inform us of this change in 
policy?  Every University department that I know of, at least informs 
the students of changes in policies before they are implemented.  NTS 
still has not informed us of these changes in our network service, which 
we as University-housed students pay for twice.  Once in the form of a 
Technology fee to our respective Colleges upon registration and second, 
in our room and board costs billed to us by Housing and Residential 
Life.  The following link includes the documentation of the 
implementation of the "Packeteer" and information collected by myself 
and two other University Students.  We are sending this link to as many 
people living in the Residence Halls as we can, and it is included in an 
editorial we have written and submitted to the Minnesota Daily.  I 
believe it would be worth a look.
  http://sdf.lonestar.org/~octal


  Thank you for your time.

  Sincerely,

  Dana Westlund, Senior, CLA, History/Sociolgy


  This email is being sent to every member of the Board of Regents, 
University President, Executive Vice President and Provost, and Director 
of the Office of Information Technology.



                                            ***************
PLEASE NOTE  my new e-mail address is myudof@umn.edu