Off-Campus Users Lose Internet Benefit

By Robin Herron

After two years of study by Information Technology (IT) staff regarding the increasing demands on the university's dial-in modems, the University Budget and Planning Group gave approval to discontinue off-campus access to the Internet through George Mason modems. At Gazette press time, a cutoff date had not been set. The change will not affect remote access to e-mail.

"Way before the World Wide Web was created, the university established a modem pool to enable faculty, staff, and students to gain access to university resources and to use e-mail to communicate worldwide. With the advent of the web, the modem pool became a gateway to a world of entertainment, movies, music, and games. This put tremendous pressure on the university's network and caused us to spend increasing amounts of money on modems, telephone lines, and fiber to the Internet. Eventually the system degraded to an unacceptable condition," explains Joy Hughes, vice president for information technology.

"We recognize that some access to the Internet is for legitimate university business. It's a shame that there is no feasible way to let this traffic through while blocking access to other sites. Fortunately, people can still get access to all of the Internet in the university labs or public libraries," says Hughes.

The dial-in modems will be reserved for university purposes, such as access to on-campus e-mail, library resources and databases, file servers, administrative systems, and academic systems/OSF1. Special access mechanisms will make it possible for modem users to access certain information resources, such as Lexis-Nexis.

Faculty, staff, and students who want to surf the Internet from home will need to subscribe to an Internet service provider (ISP), such as AOL, AT&T, Erols, or others, at their own expense. Off-campus computer users, however, will still be able to dial in to connect to any George Mason web server or web site. On-campus access will not change.

Before the decision to discontinue off-campus Internet access was made, IT staff looked at what kinds of Internet sites people were accessing, explored what other universities were doing, and talked with various faculty and student groups and the Board of Visitors Student Affairs Subcommittee. The conclusion was that George Mason would not be out of line in blocking Internet service and doing so would vastly improve access to the university's web servers.

"Most other schools in the state are letting the commercial ISPs handle the Internet traffic," says Randy Anderson, interim director of network services and emerging technologies in University Computing and Infomation Systems (UCIS). "Our goal is to provide good service to any George Mason host and reduce the number of busy signals people are getting."

Anderson also points out that improved access will promote telecommuting by university employees. People who have already set up their computers at home to dial in to the university will not have to change their settings. Anyone wishing to access university resources from home can find instructions at www.gmu.edu/departments/ucis /help_search.html.

UCIS surveys show that more than 60 percent of faculty, staff, and students already subscribe to an ISP. For those who do not, UCIS is developing a list of resources to help select a provider.

For more information, contact Anderson at randers4@gmu.edu or x33445.