In just three weeks, more than 1,000 students banded together on a Facebook group to protest the new speed cap on the University’s residential Internet network.

Implemented at the start of the spring semester, the new speed cap for downloading and uploading is set to a maximum of 1.5 megabits per second and 768 kilobits per second respectively, according to the University’s Residential Network Web site.

School of Arts and Sciences first-year student Kevin Song created the group, called “Rutgers Students for Faster Internet.”

Song established the group to convince the Office of Information Technology to change the new Internet policy to something more satisfactory.

Before, the residential network had a bandwidth limit but no speed cap.

“[The limit] was pretty hard to max out, unless you were on the Internet all the time downloading,” said John Compagnone, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore and member of the Facebook group.

School of Engineering junior Nick Divakar said he had a 1.5 megabit speed cap nine years ago.

He said a quality of service policy should be implemented, which only reduces the bandwidth during certain periods of the day when there is peak usage that actually slows down the rest of the network.

Rutgers University Office of Information Technology Director Frank Reda said numerous complaints from students and faculty prompted the decision to remove the download limit when their Internet privileges were suspended after exceeding the download limit. 

“Providing uniform, uninterrupted Internet access to all students is a fair solution. Now no student will have coursework impacted by suspension of Internet connectivity,” Reda said. “The only potential con is that peak transmission speeds [to the Internet] are slower than was previously available.”

Song said the new Internet policy initially was not a problem for him since it removed the weekly bandwidth limit. He then observed the connection was significantly slower than it had been, he said. 

Song believes the new policy might actually increase the load on the University’s network. 

He speculated it would only take one person downloading non-stop for a week to use up the 100 gigabits of bandwidth, which is 25 times the original limit. 

“In other words, two roommates could use up more bandwidth than an entire floor combined,” Song said. 

School of Arts and Sciences sophomore Brian Meng, another member of the group, believes the University created this policy to make the Internet more accessible to students.

The Office of Information Technology has been working with students who reported issues with slow Internet and is gathering data on exactly why this is a problem, Reda said. 

“We encourage any student who believes that they have a problem with their Internet connection to contact the New Brunswick Computing Services Help Desk,” he said. 

The new policy has affected students in many different ways, Compagnone said. 

“I used to have video chats with my family back home,” Campagnone said. “But with the [new] speed cap, the video quality is horrible, and I can’t really see them.”

But Reda said the speed caps should not affect network resources on campus, or internal University Web sites such as Sakai and University e-mail accounts. 

The ResNet Web site notes that some Web sites affiliated with the University, such as Databases in the Rutgers Libraries page, are not hosted by the University, and are therefore susceptible to the speed cap.

The slower Internet has made it harder for some students to submit homework assignments, use e-mail services and do online research, Meng said.

Divakar said many engineering students need to download a specific program to complete their assignments, and the program took more than an hour to download while with the old policy, the program took 20 minutes to download. 

Reda said while the Office of Information Technology has received complaints from students about the slow speed of their Internet, the office has also heard from other students that they have not experienced any problems with the new Internet policy.

The new policy was first piloted on the Rutgers-Camden campus and received only positive results, Reda said.

The Telecommunication Division also tested the new speed limits by using services like Youtube, Hulu and Netflix and had acceptable results, he said. 

But Divakar said some students have personally seen a significant decrease in the speeds of Web sites like Youtube and Hulu, which are adversely affected by the speed cap.

As the average broadband speed keeps increasing, commonly used Web sites will use more bandwidth as well, which will feel slower as time goes on, he said.

“Perhaps five years ago, that speed may have been acceptable. But now the Internet is indispensable for a college student’s social and academic life,” Song said. 

Richard Deras, a member of the group, said he joined it after becoming aggravated with the slow speed of Internet in the residence halls.

He believes the Internet should be much faster, especially when using computers connected to an Ethernet cable. 

“Ideally, the University should have wireless in all dorms, or at least faster Ethernet speed,” said Deras, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year.

Compagnone believes many students are willing to settle with a return to the old policy, with no speed cap and a bandwidth limit.

Meng said the perfect Internet policy would be unlimited bandwidth with no speed cap.