<p>I was just wondering if any current students could comment on the internet connection's speed at UF - like, is it slow or alright?</p>
<p>If you could post info from a speed test that'd be really great. I was discussing UF with a friend, and they brought up the horrifying possibility that even though there is campus-wide wi-fi, it could be really slow. So I was hoping someone could answer whether this is the case.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>When I was in a dorm I got download speeds above 8 megabits per second. I’ve never tested the wifi, but I’ve never had any issues with it being slow.</p>
<p>it’s a shame I can’t torrent on campus, those speeds would be killer. I didn’t think there was campus wide wi-fi, just most of the buildings.</p>
<p>They monitor torrent use?</p>
<p>It’s against the rules, I had a friend accidentally leave his on (or so he claimed) and they shut off his internet for a day.</p>
<p>What exactly r u planning on doing with ur internet connection?</p>
<p>They do monitor all illegal programs. If u have any on while connected to the UF internet(even if it’s on ur laptop and u r at the library), they will find out and make u sign some paper saying u wouldn’t do it again(Warning) and they will make u attend a class about illegal downloads. If they catch u again after that, u could be in very big trouble.</p>
<p>i know of some friends htat used hypemachine with no problems, but i dunno</p>
<p>-gpowsang</p>
<p>and yes, the internet speed is RIDICULOUSLY fast. I was able to stream HD youtube videos on the wireless connection with no problem</p>
<p>Oh, that’s good news. I was mainly picturing the possibility of it being so slow that you couldn’t even watch Youtube videos without waiting for it to buffer. But I’m happy that wouldn’t be an issue.</p>
<p>The internet is not bad. The internet policies, on the other hand, are some of the most draconian of any university in the nation.</p>
<p>+1 for gthopeful’s post.</p>
<p>you’ll have great internet access wherever you go, but if you’re using the dorm internet, you’re going to be subject to very serious restrictions that are a big problem if you do a lot of computer stuff.</p>
<p>The internet speed is incredible. Before you ever use the university’s internet connection, uninstall every potential p2p, streaming, etc… programs off your laptop or computer. When in doubt, uninstall. There are temporary suspensions when the rules are violated.</p>
<p>Do they restrict online gaming?</p>
<p>I spent a good deal of time looking over the all the BS rules and policies they have… from what I understand, online gaming is fine, but there will be an issue with games that require incoming connections from other players. Also, I remember that the downloadable content in some games won’t be available to you if the way the content is transmitted to you is torrent-like.</p>
<p>anything from blizzard is pretty much off limits because they default to p2p for updates and stuff.</p>
<p>just fyi, we’re strictly speaking of dorm internet. ufw (the campus network) has almost no usage restrictions whatsoever. dont do anything stupid and you’ll be fine. i kept all my p2p stuff on a flash drive to be sure that it never ran on accident while in the dorm, and i could torrent all i wanted while at the library/elsewhere on campus.</p>
<p>aforautumn, I am not sure what u r talking about. They monitor u whenever u r connected to ufl network, it doesn’t matter where u r. Maybe u just got very lucky. I know of a number of people that opened up their laptops in class and forgot about torrents running and they were caught.</p>
<p>I think its both wireless and the dorm internet, but I’m not 100% sure. I wasn’t about to be the test dummy for that.</p>
<p>i can confirm from multiple sources that you can torrent on ufw.</p>
<p>dhnet helpdesk has used it in my presence to update a blizzard game. i’ve used it 20+ times, and have spent a lot of time looking for official word from the network administrators. there are no official policies, to my knowledge, that forbid any protocol from ufw. if someone could find something to the contrary, i’d be very interested to see it.</p>
<p>if they were caught, it wasn’t simply for using torrents (or it wasn’t on ufw–i dont even know what mechanism they would use to punish violations like dhnet does). i’ve also used VNC, which is blocked on dhnet.</p>
<p>edit: i cant vouch for high volumes of traffic, however. i dont use it for large files.</p>
<p>The software that is used is [Red</a> Lambda, Identity-Aware Network Security Solutions](<a href=“http://redlambda.com/]Red”>http://redlambda.com/) Originally developed at UF. It doesn’t really make any sense that it would be used in the dorms and not on the wireless networks. We r all logged in with user name, they can easily track it. Also, most dorms r covered with wireless internet so I don’t think they would let u have that loophole. </p>
<p>Now it’s very possible that they probe the ports at random to save bandwidth, and u got lucky. Also, the software is very sophisticated, they very well might allow specific p2p sharing(like for common games). </p>
<p>All I know is my friends that were caught weren’t even living in the dorms at the time. I wouldn’t recommend anyone trying their luck.</p>
<p>You guys can use hypemachine.com, apparently they do not clock direct download at dorms</p>
<p>the fact that they use it on dhnet does not indicate that they would use it on ufw. they are two very different networks with very different purposes and network policies. idk what kind of nonsense it takes to get banned, but there are no explicit policies that block or disallow p2p traffic on ufw. given how many time others, including dhnet troubleshooters, and myself have used bittorent on ufw that i know of, one would be hard pressed to show that it was a fluke.</p>
<p>i think its a useful resource that students shouldn’t be afraid of using just because it isn’t available on a different network. i also want to say that icarus (red lambda), is really not that good, and definitely does not discriminate between different kinds of bittorent traffic…mostly because they’d have to do that on an address by address basis, which isn’t realistic.</p>
<p>just, you know, make sure everything you do is legit and theres no worries. you wont get permabanned from dhnet for getting wow violations 3-4 times in a row, despite what the policy would say.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry too much. Like aforautumn mentioned, as long as you’re not doing anything unsavory, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.</p>
<p>I used dhnet for 3 years and I only received a single violation – because I somehow got a trojan/virus on my desktop and it was spreading on the network – and they shut off my connection to mitigate the problem.</p>