Internet
From CarlWiki
Carleton's Internet access is given high priority by the administration. It is less regulated than at many colleges, and the administration has remained supportive of a largely "hands-off" approach. Activities such as file-sharing are given low priority on the network, and therefore run more slowly than web browsing and other high-priority activites, but are not blocked.
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Speed
Carleton's connection to the commodity Internet is 120 Mbps as of Fall '07. This is double the bandwidth from May '07 (60 Mbps), and four times the bandwidth that was available in Fall '06 (30 Mbps).
Periodic slowdowns on the network do occur, due to bandwidth being maxed out. Due to a quirk in the network infrastructure, these speed issues can be alleviated on ResNet machines (that is, computers outside of academic facilities) by using the proxy at proxy.carleton.edu, port 3128.
Legal issues
The College does not monitor the content that students exchange, but does receive letters periodically from companies and representative groups such as the RIAA to inform the College that a student has engaged in illegal file-sharing of materials that they own the copyright to. In such cases, the student's access to the network is blocked until all potentially leaked materials are removed from their system. Due to the effectiveness of these warnings, no Carleton student has ever been taken to court for illegal file-sharing activities, nor has the administration.
Internet2
A few services are able to use the Abilene Network, more commonly referred to as Internet2, a new network infrastructure used primarily by institutions of higher learning. Although Carleton has invested heavily in Internet-2, only a fraction of the available bandwidth is currently used.
The maximum theoretical bandwith of Carleton's I2 link is 500 Mbps, burstable to 1,000 Mbps (1 Gbps). Carleton shares a 1 Gbps link with St. Olaf to the Twin Cities; this link carries both I2 and commodity Internet traffic. In the Twin Cities, Carleton adn St. Olaf I2 traffic joices a network with other Minnesota private colleges. That network shares a 1 Gbps link to the University of Minnesota.
Unfortunately, this theoretical cap of 500 Mbps is unattainable for practical purposes, rarely exceeding 10 Mbps sustained. For students and faculty making use of Ubuntu Linux, the mirrors on the I2 make for extremely fast updates.
External links
- ITS graphs - Site for monitoring bandwidth use at Carleton
- Internet2 - Wikipedia entry on the Internet 2
- Abilene Network - Wikipedia entry on the Abilene Network
