Ravi Blogs about IT Topics

I am writing today to offer an opportunity for students living in woodframe houses and experiencing network problems to engage in a dialogue about what we can all do to improve the reliability of the network.

I want to start with some history.

History

We launched a major telecommunications project in 1992-1993 timeframe whereby all campus locations were wired for voice, data and video and we purchased our own telephone switches to provide voice services. During this time, we looked at how best to wire the woodframe houses. It turned out that it was a very costly proposition because of the location of the houses and easements caused by intervening houses not owned by Wesleyan and needing permission from these house owners to get our wires through their property.

As a result, we entered into a special arrangement for telephone service to these homes through SNET (now SBC). In 1993, though we wired all on campus locations for data network wiring, we didn’t offer data network services until later. At that time, we told the woodframe house residents to connect to our network using dial-up modems.

It was becoming apparent that we needed to do something different in terms of network access to woodframe house because dial-up modem access was too slow and students who had gotten used to faster network on campus were moving to these houses and the connections were too slow for them. In 1998, we contracted with Comcast to provide cable modem access to these houses. While the connection speed improved, reliability was a problem. This was because in 1998, cable modems were bleeding edge technology. Working with Comcast and the cable modem vendor (Bay networks) we did our best to correct the situation.

When the 5 year contract ended, based on our assessment of the situation at that time, we wanted to move to DSL, which we tried for a year and again, there were many problems. During November 2004, it was decision time again. By that time many of us had Comcast cable modems in our own houses and the experience was pretty positive and indeed the technology had come a long way from the initial one in 1998. So we decided to go back to Comcast.

Based on some difficulties we had during Spring 2006, we pushed Comcast to take definitive actions to correct the situation. They made some changes and we made some and in our estimation, overall, the situation has improved. However, my own assessment on this situation is based on the data we collect from various sources and what our support staff tell us. I want to hear directly from students, especially those who live in the woodframe houses.

Here is the Current Situation as I understand it

• Last year we had already replaced all the routers in these houses with new Linksys routers with wireless capabilities.
• This summer (June-August 2006), Comcast replaced all the cable modems in the woodframe houses with newer Motorola cable modems.
• We expanded the coverage in all houses with more than 5 students, so that on average, we have approximately 5 students per cable modem.
• We found out that one of the major issues last year had to do with the fact that all residents in a few houses were connecting wirelessly to asingle router, though there were more than one router to connect to. This was causing too much traffic to flow through a single router/cable modem, causing problems.
• Many of the network problems go away by restarting the router and cable modems in the basement. However, the residents are not allowed to enter the basement, so they had to wait for the Helpdesk support staff to come to the house. Helpdesk staff physically going to a house to do a reset does not work out due to the difficulties associated with getting an appointment. So we invested money to place in the kitchen/living rooms of each house a remote power switch, so that the residents can reset the hardware when it is stuck without having to go to the basement.
• I have called a daily half hour meeting with key ITS personnel to assess the woodframe house networking situation. We also call Comcast staff in when needed. In this meeting we discuss any pending problems, what steps are being taken to address the issues etc.
• Until recently, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 houses where problems were reported, but due to lack of communication from the residents we were unable to determine how many of these problems had been resolved. Today, we have reports from 4 houses where there may be continuing problems.
• We will continue to assess this situation. The reality of the technology is that it is not bulletproof and in cases where it does not work, we are developing a strategy to solve the problem as quickly as we can.

What can the residents do to help the situation?

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  1. The first and foremost help you can offer is communication. Just as we encourage you to report to us any problems as soon as possible, please let us know when a problem has been resolved. This will help us reduce wasting our resources by repeatedly trying to contact you to find out the problem has been resolved.
  2. In houses with more than five residents, collectively decide who is going to use which wireless access point.
  3. When you feel you have lost connections, try to explore what exactly is not available. The wireless routers operate in a frequency that is prone to interference from microwave ovens, handsfree phones operating at 2.4GHz and several other devices. See if a microwave is operating when you lose a connection. If so, you have simply lost connectivity to the wireless router and you have to wait until the microwave is turned off to reestablish the connection.
  4. Consult other residents to see if no one can get out to the network. If so, try to use the remote power switch to see if the problem clears. If you have to reset the power too often (say, 5 times during a day), it is NOT an acceptable solution. Please let Helpdesk know by calling them at 685-4000 or by emailing them at helpdesk@wesleyan.edu. When you do this, provide as many details as possible – your address, how often you have to reset power, and a contact phone number.
  5. Avoid running programs such as file sharing programs that require excessive bandwidth and check to see if your computer is infected with any virus which is using a large amount of available bandwidth therefore causing problems for other users. Contact the ITS Helpdesk if you need more information regarding this.

Please share you comments and suggestions to me either by email at ravishan@wesleyan.edu or via this Blog. Please note that all comments submitted to this blog are moderated. I will review them before releasing them. It is not my intention to hide anything, so unless the tone of the message and the language are inappropriate, I will release the comments for further discussion. The intent of this is to engage in a dialog so we can share with you all what we are doing to address the problem and how you all can help.


I would like to thank Mike Roy for the edits to this entry.