Shown above: Information Systems staff member, Sheila Heather, checks out a notebook computer to a student at the Jon T. Rickman Electronic Campus Support Center.

What is bandwidth? Bandwidth is the measure of how much data you can move from one point to another.  Think of the Internet as a series of tubes.  When passing information through the tube, only so much bandwidth or information can be squeezed through a certain spot or location.  Northwest is a place for education.  When students arrived for the Fall 2008 trimester, Northwest was running a 60 mb (megabit) connection to the Internet.  Apparently 60 mb was not enough to keep Northwest’s needs running at an operable rate.

Many instances occurred on campus where an individual was taking an online test or quiz and they were disconnected during the exam.  Northwest was at that time using all 60 mb of its bandwidth, so the network did what it thought was right and disconnected users from the Internet so the 60 mb would not be exceeded.  Students not being able to complete their online exams is a giant problem! Northwest, being a place of education, was not able to use its necessary resources to teach.  Many saw the problem arise very quickly and decided to take the necessary steps to fix the problem.  The largest step taken was the decision to ask MOREnet to upgrade the maximum bandwidth capacity for Northwest.

The Missouri Research and Education Network (MOREnet) provides Internet connectivity, access to the Internet, technical support, videoconferencing services and training to Missouri's K-12 schools, colleges, universities, public libraries, health care, state government and other affiliated organizations.  MOREnet is the one that pays for most of Northwest’s Internet connection.  Northwest is very lucky to have the funding assistance for Internet services.  If MOREnet did not pay for a percentage of our Internet, Northwest would have to increase tuition costs for students to cover the high costs of providing Internet on campus.  MOREnet granted Northwest a faster Internet connection.  The connection is now running at 100 mb, which is a one-third bandwidth increase!

After only a week of obtaining the 100 mb connection speed, Northwest was running 80 mb almost every day and steadily increasing.  The high usage rate has caused the Network Administrators to take several measures. One is decreasing from the opening of any more “game” ports in the firewall.  Northwest is here for education; therefore, any game ports being opened is not a necessity.  If the bandwidth keeps climbing and reaching closer to 100 mb, a strong possibility exists for all game ports to be closed completely. The Network Administrators are monitoring the bandwidth usage closely and hope it begins to level out soon. ~ Josh Boerma, PERT contributing author

Questions about bandwidth? Call the Client Computing Information Systems Help Desk at 660.562.1634.