BATTLE OF THE BANDwidth

摘要

Whitman College, like all other residential institutions of higherrneducation, has been struggling with taming the bandwidth for thernResidence Hall network. It doesn’t seem to matter how muchrnbandwidth is provided, or how much packet shaping effort isrnmade -- it only takes a handful of students with a new P2P tool torncompletely saturate the network, making the entire networkrnunusable for everyone else in the residence hall.rnThis spring, Whitman College Technology Services (WCTS)rnconducted a proof-of-concept project. WCTS partnered with arnlocal ISP to make “for-fee” higher bandwidth available in thernresidence hall on the same outlet as the campus ResNet. Studentsrnnow have choice of using the “free” ResNet provided by therncollege or higher bandwidth purchased from the local ISP throughrnthe same network connection in his/her residence hall room.rnThere are several benefits to this arrangement: (1) students whosernlife depends on the Net can purchase more bandwidth, as anrnalternative to complaining about the lack of services, (2) byrnremoving the high-bandwidth users from the ResNet, the rest ofrnthe students on ResNet experience better connections, and (3)rnWhitman College need not react to the demand of a few -- therncollege can add bandwidth as it sees the need and funds are madernavailable.rnWe report on the result of this proof-of-concept project, discussrnthe technical aspects of sharing our ResNet with an ISP, and thernreaction of our pilot students to the project.