DPI Deployments (81): How US Universities Manage Video and P2P File Sharing?

 

I mentioned few times the market for DPI and traffic management solutions for universities, especially those with large campuses and  students living in the dorms (see "Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?" - here).  

Campus Technology (story by Vanessa Hua) provides some examples on how US universities are dealing with the reality in which ".. a quarter of campus bandwidth is devoted to external video, more even than general academics or online gaming. The percentage climbs to half at private colleges and small public schools, according to a recent survey of 221 four-year institutions conducted by Campus Televideo, a satellite provider of telecommunications .. More than a third of college students watch television online, and almost half are interested in watching video online exclusively .. 35 percent of students across the country downloaded music illegally and 16 percent downloaded movies illegally".

• Rather than put students in campus housing on a digital diet, network administrators at UCSB shifted a third of repetitive and high-bandwidth traffic to PeerApp's [here] local cache in May 2009. The move boosted network speeds and saved money by slowing the expansion of the pipe
   
• Streaming video accounts for half of residential traffic traveling through UCSB's internet link. To manage the load, the university also sets peak (1 p.m. to 1 a.m.) and nonpeak (1 a.m. to 1 p.m.) hours. If users exceed 1.5 GB of download during peak hours, the Procera packet-shaper automatically slows down their speed to 512k for 24 hours. Well aware of the consequences, students alter their usage accordingly. Traffic on the network spikes at 1 a.m., when students schedule downloads.
   
• To discourage peer-to-peer file sharing, WSU sets it as low priority on its network, slowing downloads and uploads of bandwidth-hogging, potentially copyrighted video and music
   
• Students at SUNY Brockport can simply pony up more cash: For an additional $50 each month, students can boost their basic data package of 5 Mbps to 15 Mbps
   

See "Residential Networks: Squeezing Cats Through the Pipe" - here.