Walking into Berry Library yesterday, one encountered a disturbing scene: dozens of unmoving students staring intently as scraps of web sites slowly filled onto their computer screens.
Some were desperate, such as one senior who had been trying for two days to upload information on the Career Services recruiting site in time for a midnight deadline. Others were merely frustrated as they tried to access JCrew.com.
As each sat waiting and watching, many were likely asking the same thing: "Why is this taking so long?" The question has been a common one among the Dartmouth community during the last week, when slow Internet connections have plagued the campus.
While connections have intermittently worked at normal speeds, peak browsing hours have produced delays of up to 10 minutes, according to several students.
Bob Johnson, director of Telecommunications and Network Services, explained that the slowdowns were due to two successive technical problems with one of Dartmouth's connections to the Internet.
The College has two links to the Internet: one through a company called Genuity and one through a company called Global Crossing. The connection through Genuity is direct, while the other goes through the University of New Hampshire before reaching Global Crossing.
The College was connected to the Internet solely through UNH until about two months ago, when increased file sharing activity forced Dartmouth to allocate funds for its own direct link.
Had this new link not been established, all Internet connections would have been down throughout both problems, Johnson explained.
A Computing Services bulletin posted last night said a second factor in the network congestion was music and video sharing from student computers. The bulletin indicated that 25 percent of total campus network traffic was being generated by just three computers.
The first slowdown began last Monday night and lasted through Tuesday morning due to a problem with the UNH systems, according to Doug Green, the network manager at UNH.
Connection speeds were then normal from Tuesday morning until Friday, when slowdowns reappeared on campus, Johnson said.
When any person on the Dartmouth network requests a web page, a routing system is used to determine which link will best connect the computer to the Internet.
The problems over the last few days were due to a glitch either with the functioning of this routing system or on Verizon's telephone lines connecting Dartmouth to UNH, Johnson said. In either case, the glitch slowed down normal routing of requests.
As of 4 p.m. yesterday, technicians were still working toward identifying the cause of the problem, but Johnson said yesterday afternoon that the problem would likely be fixed by the end of the evening.
He explained that he could put a "band-aid" on the problem if necessary, but was "confident that it [would be] 100 percent fixed" by the cited deadline.
Due to budget limitations, Dartmouth uses a rather complicated system for Internet access, Johnson said, adding that he hopes to increase the size of Dartmouth's private Internet link by Thanksgiving in order to prevent this sort of problem in the future.
