Downloads of MP3s and immense digital videos are clogging the residential networks of colleges and universities across the nation.
As students flock to use these popular online services, some institutions increased their bandwidth, which regulates the amount of Internet traffic.
The University has not had any major bandwidth problems such as Internet congestion this year, but according to Jim Jokl, University director of communications and systems, the University plans to increase the its present level of Internet capacity to avoid Web congestion.
However, Network Virginia, the firm that controls Internet traffic out of Charlottesville, is facing some trouble in other areas.
The company expects to upgrade the University's Internet capacity within 30 to 90 days, allowing the University to put the extra capacity purchased over the summer, into production.
Though the University is planning to increase its bandwidth, there will continue to be no imposed limits or quotas on the amount of downloads per day.
Only if downloading becomes out of control will the University be forced to monitor its internet traffic.
"We don't track what people are doing and we don't impose any limits," Jokl said. "Hopefully everyone will respect Internet use. The resident networks are protected, so that while your roommates are downloading like crazy, Web viewing still works."
Other major universities have experienced problems regulating Internet usage, partly because the amount of e-mails with attachments of music and videos has increased exponentially throughout the past few months.
"Richness of the content has increased tremendously," said Dewitt Latimer, director of information-technology infrastructure at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. "We have gone from Napster and MP3s to multimedia KaZaA, including videos."
KaZaA is an internet filing sharing service, which allows users to download music, photographs and videos.
"KaZaA takes up 80 percent of student outbound traffic and 60 percent of inbound traffic," he said.
Rather than applying regulations, the University of Tennessee is trying to teach studentsto self-police their downloads.
Other schools already have planned for increased use of high bandwith downloads.
"There has been a massive increase in downloading pictures since the tragedies," said Ken Stafford, the technology vice chancellor at the University of Denver.
The University of Denver has doubled its bandwidth in past years and has no intentions of banning or blocking downloading in the future.
"We monitor downloading usage and slow it down during the day for academic users," Stafford said. "Most students don't even notice the difference."
As universities try to combat the increase in Internet traffic, their students continue to find more ways to download entertainment.
"I download my MP3s primarily from KaZaA because their user base is larger," first-year College student Erin Kilby said. "It is virtually impossible to download at the hours of 8, 9, or 10 p.m. because of all the people online, I've found the best time is at obscure hours, like 4 in the morning"
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