Internet connectivity is a key resource supporting Lawrence in the accomplishment of its mission and purposes. We communicate over the Internet with business partners, government agencies, and peer institutions. Students and faculty rely on the Internet to retrieve and deliver information used in the classroom, research laboratory, library, and numerous individual and collaborative academic efforts. Because Lawrence is home to most of its students, we also provide access to the Internet for recreation purposes.
“Internet bandwidth” refers to the information-carrying capacity of our connection to the Internet. Because we contract annually for a specific amount of such bandwidth, the total amount of it available to us is fixed. We have a responsibility to manage the use of that resource so that it primarily supports the educational mission of the college while also protecting the ability of students to engage in online activities associated with their non-academic life at Lawrence.
Using a combination of automatic and manual methods, Lawrence personnel actively control what portions of Lawrence’s Internet connection may be consumed by various types of activities in accordance with a guidelines adopted by the President’s Cabinet. Through this process, applications important to our academic mission are serviced at a higher priority, ensuring their availability and responsiveness. Other protocols or services are not blocked, but are given a lower priority. The following chart represents these guidelines visually - during prime hours and after hours.
| Priority | Color |
| Critical | |
| High | |
| Medium | |
| Low |
Application: |
Web |
Messaging |
Business Applications |
Recreation |
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| Time: | Prime | After hrs | Prime | After hrs | Prime | After hrs | Prime | After hrs |
| Faculty/Staff: | ||||||||
| Academic Labs: | ||||||||
| Student ResNet: | ||||||||
| Internet Servers: | ||||||||
Explanation of Application Categories:
- Web - The Web is used as a delivery vehicle for many types of activities. This category includes both general access via a Web browser and use of the World-Wide Web specifically for academic purposes, whether to retrieve information or to deliver it.
- Messaging - Various Internet communication mechanisms having a business or educational purpose. This category includes e-mail, instant messaging, voice, video, and multimedia applications.
- Business Applications - Any other application not included in the Web or Messaging categories that directly supports the college's conduct of its business activities.
- Recreation - All Internet activities of a non-academic nature. When possible, attempts will be made to prioritize traffic in this category in ways that support the specific requirements of the application class. For example, time-sensitive applications such as on-line gaming may receive preferential treatment over peer-to-peer filesharing.
Some protocols, practically those for peer-to-peer file-sharing applications (P2P), tend to consume inordinate amounts of bandwidth, especially in the outbound direction. This behavior has an adverse effect on other applications. For this reason, we not only service P2P traffic at a relatively low priority, but, further, we a) restrict outbound traffic flows to limit downloading from hosts on our campus and b) strictly limit the number of simultaneous connections to any one P2P host on our campus. Peer-to-peer applications will thus likely see lower performance than web browsing, e-mail, FTP (file transfer), and other protocols.
Because patterns of Internet use are dynamic, the implementation of our policy will necessarily change as needs change. We thus appreciate and encourage feedback from members of the Lawrence community regarding Internet performance. Direct your reports to the Helpdesk, providing detailed information including the date and time of the incident, the specific Internet application you were using, and the off-campus site you were accessing.
