Most college students head to campus with an armload of
electronic devices, from desktop and laptop computers to gaming systems, DVD
players, and smartphones. Some of the gadgets are used for study, but many are
for communication and entertainment purposes, which is causing problems for the
institutions’ IT staffs as they struggle to keep up with bandwidth demand.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ohio University, Athens, had to deal with Internet outages caused by
students staying in their rooms and using their electronic devices during bad
weather in March 2011. The outages happened despite efforts to increase
bandwidth and limit use.
About 76% of chief information officers surveyed for a
report from the Association of Information Communications Technology
Professionals in Higher Education said they worried about the increasing demand
for bandwidth on their campus. In addition, 77% cited the increasing number of
mobile devices as a major concern.
“A lot of these students are running YouTube, but what
they’re doing is listening to music through YouTube, using up bandwidth, while
they’re connected to the Internet studying,” said Jack Suess, chief information
officer, University of Maryland-Baltimore County. “It’s just background noise.”
Netflix and music services make staying ahead of demand
a headache, but it’s also expensive to provide the additional bandwidth. Ohio
University reported its IT costs have risen nearly 107% from 2007 to this year.
A 2012 survey of IT professionals found that while nearly 90% of respondents
said their IT departments paid for the cost of network bandwidth, 60% reported
not being able to recover the costs.
