University bandwidth increased for third year
Napster may re-open to students as it moves towards charging a fee

By Julie Ann Matonis
Staff Reporter

As Napster moves towards charging a monthly subscription fee, the legal questions that caused concern over use of the site at TCU may be answered, said Bill Senter, technical services manager for Information Services.

Allowing students to use Napster again is not out of the realm of possibility, he said. “If it becomes a subscription service, so the copyright issues were maintained and preserved, then I suspect the university would consider seriously unblocking Napster,” Senter said.

According to the Associated Press, Thomas Middelhoff, a Bertelsmann AG chairman, said Monday that the Napster Web site could begin charging a monthly subscription fee as early as June or July. Bertelsmann, a parent of BMG music, joined forces with Napster in October to try to forge a relationship between the Web site and the music industry.

Trish Ajello, a sophomore Spanish and history major, said she wouldn’t use Napster if she had to pay a monthly fee. But she said the university should unblock Napster if she wanted to pay the fee to download music.

“I think the university is doing what they should do now, but from a student’s perspective, I think Napster access should be opened,” Ajello said. Information Services recently doubled the campus’ Internet capacity, increasing bandwidth to 12 megabits a second. Senter said the Napster issue did not factor into the decision to increase bandwidth this time.

“Last year it was definitely a bandwidth problem,” Senter said. “Now it is more of a legal issue.”

The Napster Web site allows users to download and share music files, but it takes up a large portion of available bandwidth. Once Napster was blocked last year, about 70 percent of available bandwidth came back, Senter said.

Bandwidth is the number and size of files the network can handle at a specific time.

“In January and February of last year the Napster craze hit our campus,” Senter said. “Basically, overnight we were saturated.”

David Edmondson, assistant provost for Information Services, said the network is now acting more like a traffic cop, preventing certain types of Internet use from dominating the system.

“We monitor the network usage and set priorities on what usage we want people to have with good response time,” Edmondson said.

Senter said users are still downloading other types of music files and movies through other services, but they do not have as big an impact on the system.

“We want to keep them from overwhelming everybody else,” Senter said. “If you’re downloading, you’re less apt to hurt the academic usage of the network.”

The new 12-megabit connection costs $85,000 a year while the old six-megabit connection cost $45,000 a year, Senter said. The money for the increase comes from the technology budget.

Edmondson said the university is constantly upgrading the TCU infrastructure.

“We’re putting about $1.4 million into the TCU infrastructure every year,” Edmondson said. “It is a significant cost to keep moving technology forward.”

The newest increase in the Internet connection comes as higher numbers of students are putting their computers on the TCU network, Edmondson said.

“Close to 80 percent of students in residence halls have computers, and more of the faculty are acquiring technology within their classes,” Edmondson said.

Dawn Crisler, a sophomore business major, said she is happy about the increased network speed.

“I’m all for increasing the speed of the Internet,” Crisler said. “It would make my life a lot easier because I’m very impatient when it comes to the computer.”

Senter said he is pretty sure the Internet connection will need to be increased again next year to meet further demands of users.

“Our Internet connection is important,” Senter said. “This is the third year of increase. It’s a good track record.”

Julie Ann Matonis
j.a.matonis@student.tcu.edu