Residence hall students may notice a limit on their Internet usage this semester, due to a new policy implemented by the Academic Information Technologies Department. The policy will limit students’ Internet output to 200 megabytes a day.”Usage was well beyond what we planned for,” said Dorothy Lewis, interim director of Academic Information Technology. “Even with a recent upgrade for [Internet] traffic, 15 to 17 gigabytes worth of output is too much.”The average output for a residence-hall user was approximately five megabytes per day, not counting the top 5 percent of users who have excessively high outputs, Lewis said. That 5 percent used more than 200 megabytes in one day, she said.”The reason for the limit is that the original Internet policy said ‘unreasonable limits,’ but didn’t define unreasonable,” said David Boike, Inter-Resident Hall Association representative.The IRHA resolution supports a 200 megabyte limit, but said IRHA representatives would favor a 500 megabyte limit as well, said Boike, at-large member for the Union Drive Association. The resolution also said IRHA does not support any further restriction beyond the 200 megabyte per day limit.”They gave us the policy and said that they wanted our research,” said Pat Blair, special events committee member of IRHA. “We recognized that a few things needed change and wrote the bill based upon that. They accepted all of our suggestions, except the increase from 200 megabytes to 500 megabytes per day.”Lewis said a cap of more than 500 megabytes could cause too much traffic on the server.”We looked at the average output and thought that 200 megabytes was too generous and that a 500 megabyte limit might force us to restrict the cap even more in the future,” he said.While the policy may seem strict to avid Internet-users, Lewis said it is not as though a user will get their connection cut with a pair of scissors if they go over the limit. “If we see an incredible spike of traffic from a user’s computer, we will contact the individual before taking any other action,” she said.This policy does not affect any traffic taking place within the ISU network, such as transferring files between computers on campus, Lewis said.”What you are doing on campus doesn’t count,” he said. “However, if you are outside of campus, the limit will take effect.”Students have mixed feelings about the bill, but they are aware of the reasons behind it. “It will make sense for a faster connection,” said Brian Wessels, freshman in construction engineering. “However, I think people should be able to have a server running on their computer.”Other students said the 200-megabyte cap will hamper their computer activity.”I am opposed to it — 200 megabytes is just a small amount for outgoing traffic,” said David Capesius, freshman in computer engineering. “A gigabyte would be more realistic. People cannot even run multi-player game servers [under the cap].”On-campus residents who use their computers for day-to-day Internet browsing and instant messaging should not notice any sever slowdown, Boike said. “I don’t think [the users] will notice a slowdown, but this policy will alleviate possible slowdowns in the future,” he said.

For more information on the policy, visit to the Academic Information Technology Web site at

http://www.ait.iastate.edu/policy/residence.html.

The Internet Output Cap FAQ site can be accessed at

http://www2.iastate.edu/~djboike/netcap/.