Winfrey vs. Missouri State network dept.

WinfreyWinfrey waddafuhMissouri Icrontian
edited January 2009 in Science & Tech
Ok, so many of you know that the current campus network here has a system to prevent P2P programs from using bandwidth on the network. What I have found out to my supreme displeasure and dismay is that TF2, L4D, and many other online games have been bracketed in as the same network traffic as P2P. This means that the 6mbit connection I have to my computer drops below 56k levels for when I play TF2.

:werr:*hate*:werr:

I have just spoken with a nice gentleman who is with our campus computer support who has heard the frustration from many students, but alas he cannot do anything about it since the network is administered by someone else. He also told me that the current network admins are not concerned with this problem because there have been very few complaints. I intend to change that with a little help from my fellow students. As soon as I find an email address I'm going to try to make a generic email complaint so that a lot of people can do it with little effort.:vimp:

Game on! I'm ready for a throw down!

Comments

  • CrazyJoeCrazyJoe Winter Springs, FL Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Good Luck! Lumping TF2 & L4D in with P2P programs is some serious fail!
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    FSU does the same thing but the community college (TCC) has everything open to students on the student network, but limits your speed overall.
  • LincLinc Owner Detroit Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    My experience was the opposite at college. Juniata went so far as to dedicate part of the bandwidth to gaming and the admins would work with students to resolve conflicts with popular games. They even let you call in the MAC of your XBox so you could register it for use on the network.
  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Juniata didnt have 70,000 students.

    oh wait, he said Missouri State, not Mizzou. Good luck with that winfrey.
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    I shall be manufacturing my own luck sir, and I don't need any flak about Mizzou either.

    The biggest problem is that MOState gets its internet from MOREnet, which specializes in monitoring what users do, instead of improving network versatility. My high school used the same ISP and gave similar results(though it makes more sense on a high school campus because you don't live there!)
  • LincLinc Owner Detroit Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    fatcat wrote:
    Juniata didnt have 70,000 students.
    Yes, and Missouri State probably has more than two people running the network and may have a commensurately larger IT budget. :buck: This about helpfulness and responsiveness, not resources.
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Here's something I just wrote up. This is a personal complaint by me. I'll try to work on a generic one for more people to use later.
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Keebler wrote:
    Yes, and Missouri State probably has more than two people running the network and may have a commensurately larger IT budget. :buck: This about helpfulness and responsiveness, not resources.

    If they have a big budget they are not spending it on the network's site.;D
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Well I went over my email with some people and sent it off last night before I tried to play Team Fortress 2 (super lag edition). I got a response this morning which I found to be both encouraging and discouraging.
    Greetings Charles,

    Thank you for this information. I too am a game player for many of the reasons you state and I'd like to assure you that Missouri State is not intentionally doing anything to mess up or slow down games.

    This is the first time we've heard that anything besides WoW was experiencing slowdowns and we have been unable to locate the source of that problem although we are still working on it. The strange thing is that you can download tons of files, Linux kernels, game demos, and even play lots of online games and not experience the problem. WoW technical support wasn't helpful and just kept telling us, "it must be your network". We admit to that possibility, but why does everything else (until now) work fine?!

    Just FYI, 100% of the Internet was centrally funded through 2008 without the use of student funds, fees, tuitions, and etcetera. This year, we asked Residence Life if they would purchase additional bandwidth for the sole use of the Residence Halls because you guys can really use it and we want you to have good service. They came through with some now, but most of it still comes directly from the State in a special appropriation paid directly by the president to our ISP. That said, I really don't care about the funding source, I want to deliver good, reliable service for all (legal) applications. You're not getting it, we don't know why, and that's a big problem.

    Also, please note that our "monitoring and filtering" isn't designed to stop anything - not even illegal music or movie downloads. The Internet is a scarce resource and we can't possibly afford to buy enough to satisfy demand. So, we put things in place to provide a fair distribution of resources among all of the users, including you for whatever purpose you choose. If you choose Team Fortress 2, frankly it should work. I don't own that title, so I can't test it, but we do have someone actively playing WoW to try to locate that problem and we're working with the technical support of our equipment providers. We'll try the game tech supports again too, but again, they appear to have problems with anything that's not on their checklist.

    If you have any ideas or more information that you think could help, please pass it along - remember, I want this fixed at least as bad as you do!
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Well, they may be absolutely clueless but it sounds like they will help if they can. Better than the other way around, right?
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Ya, but the clueless part bothers me :p

    They have an opening for a student job, I may go and do that to see if I can figure some more stuff out. Plus make a hefty $7 an hour:bigggrin:.
  • MiracleManSMiracleManS Chambersburg, PA Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    I'd say thats plenty encouraging. It's always nice when the IT department in amicable to your situation.
  • cambrosecambrose
    edited January 2009
    I had the same problem with UMKC. They were blocking my damn xbox from getting on live. Just happened to have a live supported tournament for something on campus. I looked up the email of a bunch of the higher-ups involved with live and emailed them (ala the consumerist) and let them know what was going on. Amazing, all was fixed in a couple weeks. I had a similar problem again this fall with steam games. I emailed/phoned IS here for a couple weeks daily and they finally went and looked into the problem.
  • AuthorityActionAuthorityAction Missouri Member
    edited January 2009
    It seems your email has motivated the networking department to look into the issue. I found one of the networking guys plugged into one of the switches in our building playing WoW. I talked to him for a bit and he said that they have been getting reports about network latency just recently but the problem has been intermittent on their end. At least he was working on it though.
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Since they don't own TF2 you should offer to come play it for them whenever they need testing done. Maybe you could use it as an excuse to get out of a class or two.

    "Professor I need to leave early because the network admin asked if I could come in early to help test something for the school."

    It sounds like they are doing load balancing and some games are pushing a high enough packet rate that they are getting flagged as a heavy load program and getting slapped to the back of the line.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    No, it sounds like the structure of TF2's data is being inadvertently filtered by another application's packet shaping rule. It might also be that TF2 is UDP and the service provider powering the school is throttling UDP datagrams.
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Thrax wrote:
    No, it sounds like the structure of TF2's data is being inadvertently filtered by another application's packet shaping rule. It might also be that TF2 is UDP and the service provider powering the school is throttling UDP datagrams.

    That's what I was thinking as well, but the fact that their main network techie didn't know why any of this is happening is a little disconcerting. The ResNet(provides basic computer support) guy I talked to didn't even know who the ISP was for this campus. AuthorityAction says that it is MOREnet, which makes sense on many levels.

    I'm going to check the steam forums for some clues and maybe make a discussion there for possible answers.
  • LincLinc Owner Detroit Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    They have someone actively playing WoW to "fix the problem" eh? ;)
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    They were just sitting next to a switch hooked up to a laptop in the hall. Pretty amusing to picture I suppose:).
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    They'll need to get to endgame and run raids in order to better research this issue.
  • cambrosecambrose
    edited January 2009
    According to the ban I got from UMKC's network earlier this year, it has something to do with TF2's UDP data transfer.
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Here's an update, it looks like that guy testing/playing WoW on our switch has found something and I got another email, which makes me happy.
    Greetings Charles,

    I'm guardedly excited to say that we did find a problem and our test WoW players are no longer experiencing the increasing latency problem you also describe!!! Please test this as soon as possible and let me know how it works. I'd appreciate first impressions and a longer assessment to follow if you don't mind. I'm so excited - this HAS to work!!! :)

    Please remember, however, that the Internet does get saturated and even if it works now, if may not continue to work during peak times. We went from 130Mb to 200Mb just this month which will help a lot. You can go to the URL below to check Internet traffic levels. If we're below, about 95% and you have problems, please let me know immediately.

    Thank you for your patience and assistance.

    :celebrate
  • KoreishKoreish I'm a penguin, deal with it. KCMO Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    I'm curious as to how old this guy is... he doesn't seem to use a very professional dialect. Nor has he really shown knowledge of the problem or whats going on.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Sooo... TF2 tonight, yes?
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Yes.

    Yes yes yes.
  • WinfreyWinfrey waddafuh Missouri Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    I'm going to have to make sure I get my classwork done. I'll get carried away with gaming, it's dangerous.

    But yes, TF2 tonight ^5!
Sign In or Register to comment.