A new Internet policy that would limit Web output through the ISU network may be implemented this week, which would require some students to curb their Internet use.

Provost Rollin Richmond proposed the policy that would require students to limit their output to 200 megabytes a day because of a small amount of students accessing over one gigabyte. One gigabyte is the equivalent of 1,000 megabytes.

Dorothy Lewis, interim director of Academic Information Technologies, said AIT notified Richmond in late September about some students generating over a gigabyte a day. Together, Richmond and AIT formed the policy, which Lewis calls “very generous.”

“We had looked at the data and decided on 200 megabytes,” she said. “During the span of Oct. 31 to Nov. 1, the campus average of 95 percent of the students was only 8.1 megabytes.”

Richmond could not be reached Monday for comment, but Lewis said she will be in contact with him through e-mail throughout the week about the policy.

“If he has heard from the students [about how they feel], it’s quite possible that it could go into effect sometime this week,” she said.

Last week, the Inter-Residence Hall Association passed a bill that asked Richmond to amend the policy by allowing 500 megabytes to be accessed. When the bill was introduced on Nov. 2, parliament members heard from members of the gallery about how they felt about the Internet limit.

Russ Graves, freshman in computer engineering, was at the Nov. 2 meeting, and he said Monday that two gigabytes should not be considered excessive.

“I think [IRHA’s effort] was a good start,” he said. “[But] I think a cap of two gigabytes a day is much more reasonable. ISU has one of the best connections in the country, but [with this] they’re saying we can use this good connection, but we can only use it for Web surfing.”

Graves said he primarily uses his Internet output for sending game servers to and from his home, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to monitor his usage in the future.

“I can’t,” he said. “There is no way I can tell what’s outbound.”

Lewis said students who occasionally spike above 200 megabytes would not be automatically cut off from the Internet. She said they will notify students after they continually abuse the limit.

“We’ll just give people a warning and notify them if they are consistently above and give them time to adjust,” she said. “For students who continue to abuse the policy, they will be put into a pipe that will restrict their use so they cannot put out more than 200 megabytes.”

Union Drive Association At-Large David Boike, co-author of the bill, said he proposed 500 megabytes because it seemed to be a more “palatable number than 200.”

“When we were coming up with policy it was important to keep in mind that they’re going to implement this no matter what we come up with,” he said. “If we asked for anything more, it would come across as whining.”

Once the policy is put into effect, Lewis said to keep in mind that most students will not be affected by the limit and “probably won’t even notice.” In the meantime, she said, some students should start adjusting for the change.

“Even though we’ll be implementing this fairly quickly, it may take awhile to contact those people individually,” she said. “We are gathering data now and will use that as a basis to start contacting students through e-mail.”