IPad - A Traffic Management Problem for Universities

  

It is 10 years now that universities are struggling with internet access traffic management problems. A concentration of P2P fileshares and savvy power-users, high speed links, access everywhere on campus (including wireless), students living on campus - all contribute to 100% utilization of all internet links, no matter how much bandwidth is added (chart at the right taken from Angelo State University)


In addition, as universities have also high capacity on their uplinks (as oppose to asymmetrical links at home) they are also the source for many file sharing downloads from all over the world. I believe most US universities (and other educational institutes) have already implemented DPI/traffic shaping devices - many of them between 2000-2003 (regardless of RIAA copyright issues associated with file sharing). See an article from 2002 - Bandwidth Management Tools, Strategies and Issues - here.


It seems that we have now a new source for traffic problems - Apple's IPad. A Washington Post article ("Capus Overload" - here) says - "Princeton University has blocked about two dozen iPads that were messing up the university network. Seton Hill University, which is equipping every student with an iPad, has had to quadruple its bandwidth and charge students a $500-per-semester technology fee. Cornell University is also seeing networking and connectivity issues, similar to what happened with the iPhone hit".

We were waiting for this since February see "The FCC Warns: Apple’s iPad may cause Network Congestion" - here




Most DPI vendors are targeting this market - see:

• Allot: Allot Solutions for Education Networks,
• Bluecoat: Accelerated learning for university environments
• Cisco: Application Performance in Higher Education 
• Procera: PacketLogic for Higher-Education Institutions