Otterbein's Department of Information and Technology Services is taking steps to improve Internet quality on campus. Campus Internet is now faster and more spam-free.
The Internet is running faster because the bandwidth was increased. Bandwidth is defined as the amount of data that can be transferred in a given period of time, so faster bandwidth means videos download faster, pictures upload faster and pages load faster. The bandwidth was increased in late October by nearly 150 MB of general Internet.
Freshman undecided major Sarah James said that at first she didn't immediately notice a change in Internet speed. "But YouTube does run a bit faster and doesn't freeze anymore. The Internet speed was kind of horrible before."
IT monitors the overall use of Internet bandwidth to decide if the bandwidth should be increased. When a certain average threshold is met, the IT department goes before the Cabinet and President Krendl and makes recommendations to increase the current bandwidth.
Executive Director of IT Jeff Kasson said, "Our current Internet connection exceeds most of our peer institutions' bandwidth. It is important that we have sufficient bandwidth to allow our students and faculty to access all of their school and personal resources, including video, chat and research."
The U.S. Department of Commerce recently discovered that two-thirds of colleges in the U.S. do not have the speedy broadband connections needed.
In a press release from the White House last July, the Obama administration said that increasing broadband could bring new opportunities for the economy.
High-speed Internet could make it possible for professionals to make connections with clients thousands of miles away.
The Federal Communications Commission is hoping to connect 100 million U.S. households to broadband connections of 100 MB by 2020. This will also include college communities like Otterbein.
Amanda Carlisle, a freshman nursing major, said that campus broadband is not sufficient. "Some days, the Internet is pretty decent, but most days it's just too slow."
To keep the Internet clean and running well, it also has to stay virus-free. To do this, the IT department is working to protect computers from spam.
While there are no specific words that can trigger e-mails to go into spam folders, if nothing is written in the subject line, an e-mail will be directly caught by spam filters.
Not all spam can be prevented, however. Campus Internet has an anti-spam server to protect against unwanted spam, viruses, phishing and malicious e-mails, and school e-mail programs have built-in protection against spam. Users have to prevent spam on their own as well.
Marissa Muniak, a freshman undecided major, said, "Otterbein's e-mail doesn't have as much spam as other e-mail sites. I don't think I've had spam in my campus e-mail."
Kasson's advice to preventing spam is to not give out Otterbein login credentials. t&c;
