[Today, I offer a guest article written by Alex Goldberg – a student at Queen’s University. Traffic shaping isn’t just an issue for commercial ISPs.]
During the last week of the semester, it is not uncommon to see a bulk of students at Stauffer Library pounding away at their term papers or reports. In my case, I am polishing off a poster presentation on my Honours research project. Most students use the library as a venue with minimal or limited distraction; all of the necessary resources for research are available, between electronic and physical texts, as well as a general atmosphere conducive to study.
Like most universities, Queen’s provides free wireless internet access at all of its libraries. This provides access to electronic academic resources available exclusively to Queen’s students, as well as resources in the public domain. However, the network provided by Queen’s is also used extensively for file sharing between students on the network.
The legality and legitimacy of file sharing aside, I don’t believe that downloading the latest Futurama episode should take precedence over one’s access to academic materials, especially on a university campus.
Unfortunately, the capacity of the university network is limited. On several occasions, I have found that my connection deteriorates considerably during peak usage times. In fact, the bulk of this post was written during periods that I’ve been waiting for pages to load. While the ideal solution to the problem would be to expand the university network’s infrastructure and to increase capacity, there are obvious costs associated with it, let alone the time and energy required to implement such a change at a public institution.
Packet prioritization is an issue for more than just the commercial ISPs; capacity constraints affect university campus networks as well. Since there is a limit to the capacity of the university network, most would agree that research and access to basic information should take precedence over downloading for personal entertainment.
While the end goal should be to expand network capacity and make all information easily available, the immediate needs can be addressed by implementing packet prioritization.
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Queens University, traffic shaping, net neutrality