The Penn State Problem

The Penn State Problem is this: their network is convoluted. Let me explain.

Introduction
Originally I thought PSU did not have a network that met the needs of its students. I am half correct. The problem is multi-faceted, and because of bureaucracy nothing is getting done about the situation. At 8pm on any given day, my internet connection here is approximately 0.22 megabits per second. This is absolutely abysmal. This morning, at 8am, my connection was 17megabits per second. This connection is 77 times faster than the one I had last night. Since 0.22 is unacceptable, I demanded that I get to the bottom of this. Talking to experts on the situation, this is what I have found.

Students and Internet Piracy
This post isn't about the morality of internet piracy. A bandwidth limit exists to hamper the efforts of those who torrent. When I spoke to an IT student about the issue, he told me:

"I can think of many different things I would do with a 10GB limit than download movies"

And he has a fair point. Regardless of what students are using the bandwidth for, one logical statement can be made: PSU cannot reasonably sustain the current internet connection with a limit of 10GB. PSU cannot meet the needs of their students.

The Connection Problem
The university network works like this: Each sattelite campus has an internet connection that has to reroute itself through University Park for verification. This line then travels through 35 different points before arriving here at Berks again (source: IT). The network cannot reasonably hold the download needs of each student using it: because 0.22 megabits per second is barely a connection. The internet works, but I lag horribly.

The Bureaucracy Problem
To address this problem, at the beginning of the semester, PSU indicated that they were to lay extra lines down to stabilize the network. The ballpark deadline for this measure was December 2010. It is February 2011 and this still hasn't been done. According to one source, red tape is slowing the process down (source: SGA affiliate). According to my IT source, it does take time to lay down new cables and get the system to work; but it seems that the university is stone walling its students. To immediately fix the problem, I believe that the bandwidth limit needs to go DOWN and not up. I honestly think the limit was raised to "appease" students, but it has created this problem of slower internet speeds. More rescom violations means less people hogging the network. Cruel, but it works. Don't like it? Tell PSU to fix its unstable network.