Syracuse University students may have been surprised to learn when they returned to campus last weekend that their normally fast running internet service had been reduced to a slow crawl.

Computing and Media Services received a multitude of complaints from students over the weekend about the slow speed the internet was moving at, said Deborah Nosky, the manager of IT communications and professional development for CMS.

Once informed of the problem, CMS internal engineers proceeded to Haven Hall where they were able to monitor the traffic flow and to discover where in the system a problem was occurring, Nosky said.

Engineers were able to see where information was getting jammed in the gateway of the system, she said.

A gateway moves information from the server to the internet service provider but because of the jam, students were able to access university sites easily but accessing other sites was very difficult, Nosky said.

“That is the difference between traffic here and what had to be outside,” she added.

Engineers replaced the hardware and had the internet back up to speed at about 6:30 p.m. Monday night, she said.

Nosky said it is possible the problem could have existed toward the end of last semester but with fewer students on campus, students may not have noticed the problem until they returned and a large number tried accessing the internet at once.

“It was just rotten luck,” she said.

Matt DeMay, a junior electrical engineering major who lives in Washington Arms Residence Hall, said his connection was much slower than when he left SU, but added the beginning of the semester is a good time for a problem with the internet.

“It’s the beginning of the semester so it’s not that big of a problem, if it was later it may be,” he said.

Rachel Liss, a sophomore undecided major in the School of Management and resident of Marion Hall , said the slower internet connection was very inconvenient to only be able to search university Web sites.

“There were other things I wanted to search other than school,” she said.

Published on January 14, 2003 at 12:00 pm