<p>So I was doing my housing app and I found that the internet service that UT offers, called resnet, only offers 5 GB of bandwidth per week.</p>
<p>I am somewhat confused because I almost always use 5 GB within a week at home. Is this really all they offer for no cost?</p>
<p>Also, if I were to opt with another plan, would it cost me that amount per week or for the entire semester?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>The cost is for the whole year. I am not sure you can get another plan in the dorm. You may have to take what they offer.</p>
<p>wait so based on your experiences, would you say 5 GB is enough for maybe 4-5 hours of studying a night with youtube playing in the background?</p>
<p>I am not sure. I do know that it may be too distracting to study in your room. You may need to consider alternate ways to get your music than solely from YouTube.</p>
<p>questionforyou</p>
<p>For any quality video streaming buy tier 3 - 75GB. $55 per year.</p>
<p>I don’t know your major, but if you are going to have any classes with video screenings (a lot of classes use films as supplemental materials) 5GB is not enough.</p>
<p>alright so assuming the $70 for the tier 3 resnet is a flat amount for the entire year, I think I’ll opt for that since I’ll be studying in my dorm most of the time.</p>
<p>WOW!
The price went up. :(</p>
<p>Yes - the cost is for the whole year - and you can upgrade or downgrade any time throughout the year - so if you see you are needing more gb then you can do an upgrade and they will charge you the difference in price - same with downgrading - if you see you aren’t using all of the gb - you can downgrade and get refund of difference</p>
<p>I did notice the price changes for next year - interesting that level 2 went down in price, level 3 moderately went up - and tier 4 had a huge increase in price.</p>
<p>The 5 Gb package will work for ~80% of students and will sufficiently cover whatever activity you would expect those 80% to be doing (hw, YouTube, video games, etc.) Tier II will be good for the next 10% who occasionally download big software packages/video games and Tier III are for the remaining 10% that are avid torrenters. </p>
<p>What’s nice is that all of your activity with UT’s servers does not get counted towards your bandwidth limit. Since most of the class-related videos are hosted on UT’s servers, they will not count against you. Moreover, if you ever exceed your bandwidth limit, you simply get downgraded to a slower speed for the week. This connection is significantly slower, but plenty fine for general web surfing (e.g. Facebook but not YouTube). And even still, your connection with UT’s servers will be as fast as before so breaking your bandwidth limit will not really inhibit you academically.</p>
<p>tl;dr 5 Gb/week will cover most students; start there and upgrade if necessary (parents: if you start at a higher tier your child probably won’t ask for a downgrade when they should)</p>
<p>My D tried to use tier 1 for 3 weeks in the beginning of the year. She had to watch at least 2 videos and lectures per week on vimeo and youtube, and sometimes she watched something (some documentary) on netflix when she wanted to skip screening in class.
5 GB did not work.</p>
<p>She did not download any software, did not play any video games, she just watched her assignments. </p>
<p>I wonder why her professors did not know they could host videos on UT website., including lectures of UT professors, the lectures were all hosted on vimeo. :(</p>
<p>Ya Ya, it’s unfortunate that your daughter was put in that position; I’ve never been in a class with similar requirements. And even though she had to upgrade, I think you’d agree that the best plan is still to start with the default package and upgrade only as necessary.</p>
<p>My sin lived in the dorms 2 years ago when he was a freshman. He had the highest resnet package & I’m sure used every bit of it. It’s a deal compared to what we pay in his apt now. If you have a kid that uses Xbox live, Hulu, or Netflix they need the extra. My daughter is starting at UT this fall & am assuming she’ll use Hulu & Netflix, too.</p>
<p>^^I promise calling my son a sin was an accident! iPhone fingers :D</p>
<p>^^ You could have edited it to change the word, but it is more amusing to leave it as is.</p>
<p>frever
Yes, it can make sense to wait a couple of weeks before upgrading.</p>