Beginning next year, University Information Services plans to revise all of Georgetown technology services. UIS will focus its improvements on the refurbishment of Saint Mary’s Hall, the improvement of telephone services in residence halls and cooperation with students on the management of bandwidth.
At a townhall meeting on Tuesday, David Lambert, Chief Information Officer for the University, discussed information technology issues with students. The attendance at this meeting was the highest that it has ever been for this type of event.
“The primary mission of UIS is to ensure that Georgetown students have as good a technological environment as possible, comparable to those of technology-oriented universities like MIT,” Lambert said.
UIS will begin with minor changes in the University technology services this academic year, but most improvements will be implemented next year, according to Lambert.
The current amount of bandwidth available to students in residence halls is limited to 33 percent of the total bandwidth, according to Lambert. UIS reduced the bandwidth at the beginning of this semester for on-campus students in an attempt to deal with the high rates of student Internet traffic.
“It was obvious that there would be difficulties using the Internet if we didn’t do something,” Lambert said.
The reduction in the bandwidth available to students ensures that not all Internet traffic will be allocated to the use of “Kazaa,” an Internet music-trading service which has become popular since the shutdown of Napster.
“If [the] student bandwidth is all used by Kazaa, students can’t do other things. Students were doing file transfers and were getting frustrated with the limited bandwidth. Their sense was that there was a small number of users that were using up all the bandwidth,” he said.
Lambert said that students’ bandwidth will continue to be limited until the University network has the capacity for increased bandwidth.
“Certainly for some time we will need to limit Kazaa until there is more network capacity for bandwidth … [this could last for] six months to a year,” he said. “We know that if we increase bandwidth, someone is out there writing an application that students will want to use … the problem isn’t one that will disappear,” Lambert added.
Lambert said that UIS plans to work with students to implement the new technology services. “We don’t want to put ourselves in the position of becoming policemen to students. We want students to take an active role in making decisions.”
St. Mary’s Hall is currently undergoing reconstruction to become a more advanced technology center for the University. He acknowledged the inconvenience of the new facility’s location, but said that it was the best location due to the limited space available on campus.
Lambert also addressed the new personal security code system that students now need to use to make off-campus calls. Lambert apologized to the students for the sudden transition without notice and said that the problem should have been discussed earlier.
