The Duc Pond

Check out this letter I wrote to Rutgers’ daily newspaper The Daily Targum, published November 5, 2001. I figured I should paste it here because I don’t know how long the link will be good.

RU computer system is not up to speed

I nearly laughed out loud when I read Michael Mundrane’s assessment of Rutgers’ network infrastructure (The Daily Targum, Oct. 30). He must experience a network completely different from the one that thousands of other students and I use every day.

He notes that current Internet bandwidth is 10 times the amount we had three years ago. Three years ago I was a first-year living in one of the few wired residence halls at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and I experienced download speeds 20 times what I’m getting these days. I understand that many, many more residence halls now have Ethernet access and that demand for bandwidth is much higher, but it’s quite obvious that not nearly enough has been done to create an adequate supply.

The problem is even worse than that, however. As useful as the Internet is for academic use, it’s even more important to ensure that access to Rutgers’ own servers is fast and reliable. As a computer science major that regularly accesses computers like Remus, the Cereal machines and the Hill Linux machines, I can assure you that the network is barely usable and is not the fast, lag-free access we’ve had the past few years. I stopped working on a programming assignment to write this commentary because it was taking over 15 seconds for my keystrokes to appear in the terminal. It is impossible to efficiently write, debug and run software in this environment.

The above complaints are only applicable, of course, if the network is even operational. Twice this semester the Winkler Residence Hall has experienced a nearly 72-hour network outage. Combine that with periodic shorter blackouts and you have a very unreliable network experience.

While other schools have had their entire campuses wired for network access for years, Rutgers prides itself for just beginning that process last year with its over-glorified RUNet 2000 initiative. While other schools offer their students wireless LAN access on campus buildings and lawns, Rutgers has barely dabbled in that area, limiting access to those in the CoRE and Hill buildings. While other schools give their students fast and reliable service, Rutgers students suffer with download speeds slower than access they would get with 56K modems.

I don’t presume to think that I could do a better job, but clearly there are people and schools that can do better. In fact, I’m confident that the intelligent people who are already working at RUCS and the Telecommunications Division can do better, too. Given the importance of network and Internet access in this day and age, we shouldn’t consider the wiring of residence halls a remarkable accomplishment. We should consider it a necessity — the bare minimum. As with many things at this University, Rutgers should hold itself to a higher standard.

Ducson Nguyen is a Rutgers College senior majoring in computer science.

The day this letter was published, someone from the RUCS (computer services) gave me a call and asked for details about outages and slowdowns. I provided whatever information I could provide, and the guy promised to make things better in our building. I think things actually did improve after that, so never feel like letters are worthless.