The Oberlin College servers that Oberlin students use to send e-mail, access web sites, and get files have not always been considered up to par. There have been problems in the past with students being able to access to web pages, and faculty members being unable to retrieve files. The connections were often slow and sometimes nonexistent. But this year, Oberlin’s Director of Client Services for the Servers, Cynthia A. Murnan, thinks the supply is starting to catch up to the demand.

In the Oberlin network, there are many different servers: one for email, one for web
pages, one for Presto, one for the student lockers and network files, and one for printing. The real cause of the slowness some students might experience is the limit in the number of megabytes per second (also known as Mb/sec) that the computer cable can handle. Originally, the College computer server had two super-computers called T1s. Those computers had capabilities of 4.5 Mb/sec. Despite their power, they didn’t supply enough bandwidth (meaning how much traffic each computer can handle) to support students’ needs. A few years ago, the College ordered a third T1. However, just as it arrived, the file-sharing program Napster debuted, resulting in an enormous demand for bandwidth by the student body. Immediately after that, the College ordered a partial DS3. As Cynthia Murnan said, “We got [the DS3] in place and life was good, but it was only good for a little while.”

Most arriving first-years at the College had Napster, or another type of file-sharer, on their computers. Having Napster, Gnutella, Aimster, or KaZ on a computer turns that computer into a server. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it takes more bandwidth to run an interactive computer. Shortly thereafter, music sharing on the internet exploded; music sharing takes up more bandwidth than any other kind of file exchange. This created a whole other problem: once a computer begins an activity, it retains the size of bandwidth needed until it completes its task. Since there was no way to make the Oberlin network give computers performing academic research priority, a few computers downloading music could take up most of the College’s bandwidth to the exclusion of all other students. On one occasion, one computer took up the entire campus’ bandwidth for three hours.

To try to limit that as best they could, the College spent the summer changing the whole campus’ server over to a “switched environment.” That means that any dorm, or between-dorm exchange, can only be using 10/100 Mb/sec of what is available on the server. This helped within campus, but there was no way to regulate how much of the bandwidth was being taken up by gaming and downloading music.

Then the school bought a “Package Shaper,” (TM) that helped them regulate how much of the bandwidth can be spent on certain things. They have also given a priority listing to files. The high priority activities are ftp (file transfers), http (web browsing), and smtp (email). The only low priority activities are music files and video feeds. Murnan hopes these changes will alleviate most of the congestion on the Oberlin server. Another addition designed to hold down bandwidth is the College’s limit on how many Mb/sec music files the students can have in total. The first week on campus this year, Oberlin students were using 87% of the DS3’s capabilities for mp3s and games. The current limit on bandwidth use of 6 Mb/sec allotted between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., and 9 Mb/sec between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. is being fully enforced at all times, and is being utilized for almost all music downloads. “In addition to [putting a cap on ResNet use] we put a cap on how much of the total bandwidth music can take,” Murnan said.

This is a constantly monitored process. The combined servers can trace the traffic coming in and going out, determine what a type of file is, how much memory is being used in what places, and for how long. The school imposes these regulations to try to avoid having to prohibit downloading music altogether. Some other colleges have put up fire-walls against the outside internet, and refuse to let students access certain sites. “We are not into prohibiting people from doing things –– that is not the ethos at Oberlin... [we considered limiting gaming] and we said, well, why should we? This is where you live,” Murnan said.

The server is now working on “Keep[ing] the network humming in a very efficient way with the most thorough-fare for the most people,” Murnan said. And a free-flow of information is what colleges are all about. At this point in the school year, Murnan said, “We’ve not had anybody report significant slowness problems like we did last year.”

The problem for the server’s future, said Murnan, is going to be managing video traffic. The amount of space an mp3 takes up pales in comparison to a video feed. With the fiber-optic cable in place for the DS3, however, all the College would have to do to increase speed even further is to purchase the necessary equipment to get runnning up to 45 Mb/sec. Whether the supply that the College server gives in the future will meet the demand waits to be seen.

If you do want to report a problem, e-mail consult@oberlin.edu.