This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

Cambridge Uni network

Hi, i was wondering what the internet connections are like around the university.

What are the download and upload speeds of the internet connection?

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

Helenia

Speedy speedy - no idea of numbers, ask a compsci. I miss it now *stuck on crappy 56K at home :mad:

Reply 2

Willa

1GB transfer rates around certain colleges i've heard of. Download rate is about ADSL (.5mb/s) from the internet - let me put it this way - it's plenty fast

Reply 3

MadNatSci

People have downloaded feature films in 10 mins; and this is while they're throttling the download speed. God knows how fast it'd be if it were allowed to run full speed! So yeah, it's fast. I think the technical term is T3? Someone please correct me if i'm wrong!

Reply 4

mobbdeeprob

MadNatSci

Yeh, it is most probably T3. A friend told me of the situation that you outline above happening to a guy who I know - he apparently downloaded a movie from a mate in the US which was basically a DVD (which was not compressed to .mpeg or .divx). This DVD basically came in 10 minutes and was 12GB - across the internet via the college T3 connection.

I can't remember which college this friend of a friend goes to - but apparently they can easily afford an amazing internet connection, decent servers etc. because of their links to I.T and science firms.

Reply 5

Lagz

Like most other universities we are on Janet/SuperJanet.

Download rates are usually limited by the place you are downloading to as the connections are so high speed. I've got up to about 4.5Mb/s from blueyonder, but then if you are downloading 4 or 5 files at once each will be going at 4.5Mb/s, totalling in excess of 15Mb/s so basically its limited by the other end. Sending files internally over the network depends on your college. Most have 100Mbps, some have 10Mbps, and some have 1Gbps.

Reply 6

jonas123

T3 *drooolsss*

i better save up for a few more harddrives now!!

i pressume the connection is through my network card, does that mean i'll need to get a 100mb/s one? i don't know what i'm talking about!!!

Reply 7

Bob the dog

Yeah, we need the high capacity as there are scientist who cart about GB's of data around the place day by day... but be carefull, a lot of colleges are starting to put filters and blocks on, so don't get your hopes up too much.

Reply 8

Acaila

Supposedly there's something like a 1GB download limit at Robinson according to my friend.

Reply 9

jonas123

argh download limits suck.

Reply 10

Acaila

Ah well I doubt I'd dl movies anyway so I wouldn't worry.

Reply 11

Alaric

It isn't T3, that's only 45Mbps.

Most colleges have 10/100Mbit full duplex LANs, a lot of colleges are still only connected to the University-wide connection via 100Mbit links though more are switching to 1Gbit links.
Around the University there's a fibre network that supports 10Gbit I think, then we've got a multiple gigabit connection down to London thanks to JANET.

I think most people speeds are limited either by JANET's transatlantic links or their college's connection to the Granta Backbone Network.

The most I've got off a non-Cambridge non-JANET server was a constant 3 MBytes a second and I can easily get to 5 MBytes a second if I download more than a few files at once.

And I have this connection all summer - woot!

Alaric.

Reply 12

Squishy

Acaila

Supposedly there's something like a 1GB download limit at Robinson according to my friend.

Yup, no more than 1GB every 10 days (so average 100MB/day). The connections are still really fast, but the college is quite severe about downloading too many large files for personal use.

Reply 13

acidbubble

Squishy

Yup, no more than 1GB every 10 days (so average 100MB/day). The connections are still really fast, but the college is quite severe about downloading too many large files for personal use.

does homerton have a download limit?

Reply 14

Squishy

keithy

does homerton have a download limit?

Don't know the specifics of Homerton, but I believe Trinity has a download limit of 3GB/day and 14GB/week...since it's the richest college, I don't think the other colleges would be much more lenient than that. Of course, if you need a large download for academic purposes, I'm sure they'd let you...

Reply 15

musicbloke

Squishy

Yup, no more than 1GB every 10 days (so average 100MB/day). The connections are still really fast, but the college is quite severe about downloading too many large files for personal use.

Does that include connecting to internet pages or just actual downloading?

MB

Reply 16

Acaila

Squishy

Yup, no more than 1GB every 10 days (so average 100MB/day). The connections are still really fast, but the college is quite severe about downloading too many large files for personal use.

Yeah my friend dled 1.1GB and the college sent him a nasty letter saying if he did it again he would be denied access to the network or something.

Reply 17

jonas123

musicboy

Does that include connecting to internet pages or just actual downloading?

MB

connecting to internet pages downloads data hence i guess it would include 'surfing the web'. That kinda sucks...all that bandwidth and nothing to do with it :mad:

Reply 18

Squishy

musicboy

Does that include connecting to internet pages or just actual downloading?

MB

It depends where you download them from. If it's from the university cache, or if you're using a British mirror site, that's fine...I suspect posting on UKL would be all right too because the server's in the UK (I'm guessing), but most webpages are stored in the US, and they don't like excessive use of the transatlantic link.

If you're interested, the university publishes bandwidth usage tables. Why they make it available to the public is beyond me, but they do.

Reply 19

DC_1234

Squishy

Yup, no more than 1GB every 10 days (so average 100MB/day). The connections are still really fast, but the college is quite severe about downloading too many large files for personal use.

This kind of thing is covered in the fresher's guides isn't it? I don't expect you to know Sidney's by-laws about such things but if they exist I'm assuming we will be told about them, yeah?