Students living in New Hampshire Hall, and the Fayerweathers and Choates dormitory clusters will be able to connect more easily to a new high-speed wire to acess electronic mail and other network services by the start of Fall term.
Larry Levine, the College's director of computing services, said installation of the new wires &emdash; called Ethernet &emdash; in the Fayerweathers and the Choates that is going on now should be completed by September.
Currently, students can have Kiewit run Ethernet wires through walls into their rooms for $125. Though the cost will not change with the installation this summer, with the flick of a switch students can immediately use the higher-speed wire.
LocalTalk, which is how most residence halls are currently wired, transmits data at a rate of 230 kilobytes per second, according to William Taylor, director of technical services at Kiewit. Ethernet transmits information at a rate of 10 megabytes per second, which is about 40 times faster.
"The Dartmouth physical data network is old," Levine said. "It is ancient for a network. We originally planned for it to last five years and it has lasted us ten."
The College is currently reviewing a $2.85 million proposal to install Ethernet wires all over campus, Levine said, but he said he did not know when a decision would be made.
If the proposal is funded, the College will need about two to three years to complete the installation, Taylor said.
Once the $2.85 million project is complete, students would no longer have to pay the $125 connection fee.
All College administration buildings already use the faster Ethernet wire network, Taylor said.
When the College renovated New Hamp last summer, it installed Ethernet jacks next to the LocalTalk jacks in the every room, Taylor said.
Levine said the new network wires will allow students who have Ethernet-capable comuters to use the faster system.
"We're going to have two ports per [student]," Levine said. "One will be Ethernet and one will be LocalTalk. Students will be able to choose whichever network their computer can support."
There will not be any difference in the services students receive from the network, Taylor said. Students using Ethernet will simply receive their information faster.
Most students at Dartmouth use LocalTalk with their Apple Macintosh computers because they own older computers which do not come Ethernet-ready, Taylor said.
Ethernet is installed in most of the newer Macintosh models, but students with older computers must purchase additional equipment to use Ethernet, Taylor said.
Students have to pay the $125 activation fee every time they change rooms.
