That's What She Said

BY ANNE LONGERBEAM

The Internet at the University of Mary Washington is the pinnacle of frustration for most students on campus.

Basic tasks can be achieved on normal service providers in seconds. For Mary Washington students, simple tasks like checking email and Facebook can take a couple of minutes, if they work at all.

The worst time that the Internet failed to work for me was the very minute I was registering for classes when I had to adjust my schedule for classes over the summer. I kept refreshing the registration page on Eaglelink, and everything was working fine until the clock hit 8 a.m.  All of a sudden, the Internet spit out the phrase “server not found.”  Mary Washington posted a sign on their website that it was undergoing repairs due to a server crash.

This isn’t the only time an Internet crisis has happened to me.  I remember multiple deadlines coming close to not being completed because of the internet crashing at the last minute.  Nothing is worse to a student who has just stayed up most of the night, forced to wake up early again the next morning, just to have the final step thwarted because of a simple flaw in the internet.

The Internet isn’t only frustrating with final deadlines and homework; it also takes an eternity to load YouTube videos, or music downloads.

As one of my friends put it, if you want a brief break from homework and want to watch a YouTube video, you forget you’re not at home and can’t actually do this seemingly easy task.

If the Facebook login screen is the only page you can reach of Facebook, this is one clear sign that the University of Mary Washington’s “intelligent traffic shaping” could be kicking you off certain websites.  Basically, during peak hours UMW can kick you off websites like Facebook and YouTube if they are classified as “recreation and entertainment.”

Also, if your roommate happens to be on the Internet at the same time as you, it seems like the internet cannot handle it; one roommate always ends up unlucky and kicked offline.

Or, the Internet could have to do with the weather conditions.  Whenever it’s stormy, or even rainy outside, it seems as if the Internet kicks you offline to no end.

UMW has planned on purchasing an entirely new network provider called Apogee Interactive Inc. This provider will include access to high speed Internet, telephone and cable television services, and possibly HBO included.  These new changes to the Internet provider will not take place until the 2009 winter semester.

According to the University of Mary Washington’s website, the University also plans on increasing the amount of bandwidth for this year, due to a server overload.  This purchase was originally planned on being completed at the beginning of the school year.  Since this first deadline of extended bandwidth still has not been met, I say I’ll believe it when I see it and can actually surf on the Web whenever and wherever reliably.