- How does the Missouri State University Dialup Policy affect me as an Missouri State University student or
employee?
If you dial into the Missouri State University Westplains modem pool,
you will be restricted to the number of hours you have access to the modems during peak times.
If peak times are defined as between 1:00 pm and
1:00 am, any time you are dialed in in the morning before 1:00 p.m. is not
counted against your 75 hours. For instance, if you dial in at 12:00
noon and stay on until 3:00, you will be credited for the 2 hours between
1:00 and 3:00.
Click on the icon on the left to get the current monthly limit and peak times
to view the Dialup Peak Definition page.
You may also see your personal usage statistics
for the Springfield off-campus pools by clicking on the head.
If you are dialed in over the monthly limit during peak times, you will not
have access to any of the Missouri State University Dialup Modems. This includes the
West Plains, Mt. Grove, and Springfield on-campus pools, so if you have used your limit
using a Springfield off-campus pool, you won't be able to dialup the these
modem pools either.
The good news is that since this policy will hopefully get people to
regulate their usage more, you have a better chance of dialing in without
getting as many busy signals. If this policy was in effect starting in
November, less than ten percent of the 5000 modem users would have been
denied dialup access. This means that only a small portion of the
people dialing in will be negatively effected by this policy. Everyone
else will be able to connect more easily.
- Why was a Dialup Policy needed?
One of the biggest complaints that we get is about how busy the modems
always are. Students, faculty and staff can sometime spend many
minutes trying to dial in from off campus before they connect. We completely understand the
frustration that accompanies the dialup process because we have to deal with
it just as much as everyone else. We decided that something needed to
be done to help this problem.
When we examined the modem usage we found that less than ten percent of
the modem users were using about forty-five percent of the modem
resources. We felt that most of these users were abusing their dialup privileges
and that they were infringing on the rights of the other ninety percent of the dialup
users' modem time.
This policy is the first step in solving the dialup problems by more
equitably distributing the available modem time.
- Why was this policy chosen as opposed to others?
Our largest decision making factor was that we needed something that we
could put into effect by January 2000. This eliminated most of the
options that involved buying new modems. We were also concerned with
the small percentage of users that abuse the free dialup modems by dialing
in continuously. And finally, we expect that there are several users
that leave their computer dialed in even when they are not using the dialup
connection. Using these factors we decided to put into effect a policy
that limited the amount of time that a user could be dialed in to the Missouri State University
modems.
We considered limiting dialup by setting the number of hours a user can
dial in per day, week or month. A monthly limit was favored because it
gives the user the flexibility to dial in for several hours on one day and
not dialing in on others. It is also easier to enforce. To
decide on how much time to allot each user, we used the dialup records from
the months of October and November to find the ideal monthly limit by
balancing the number of users who would be disallowed dialup access against
the amount of modem-time that would be gained. We looked at several
scenarios from 40 hours a month to 100 hours a month and found that 75 hours
best balanced the two factors.
As we were figuring out the best monthly limit, we realized that there
was no point in charging users time when the modems are not full. We
want to encourage users to dial in during the times that the modems are
generally underutilized. We looked at the Modem
Usage Graphs and found
that the modems were full between 1:00 PM
and 1:00 AM. We labeled
this time frame as the peak time and adjusted the policy.
We understand that this policy will not solve the dialup problem.
We do, however, have a commitment to solving this problem so you can expect
changes that will result in more modem availability. One change you
can expect in the near future is the Express modem pool. This will be
a different phone number that you can call if you only want to be connected
for 30 minutes or less. This will allow users to check their e-mail
quickly without having to wait to connect to the larger modem pool.
- Are there other options that might be implemented in the
future?
The answer to this question is yes. We are looking at
all the alternatives ranging from terminating all modem services, to
contracting with a commercial provider, to installing a massive modem bank
(at least 3 to 4 times the current size) provided we can get the State
funding we've requested. All options in between are also being
investigated.
Who can I ask questions regarding the Dialup
Policy?
Please direct technical dialup policy questions to the
Networking Staff.
