Submitted by Martyn Johnson on Fri, 19/11/2010 - 15:04
The "wgb" wireless network is running very slowly at the moment and is congested. The reason for this is that the ADSL connectivity that lies behind it has been capped at 128kbit/s because of excessive usage under Demon's fair usage policy. We are allowed 200GB in any rolling 30-day period, and it seems that this has recently been exceeded.
We'll be looking into what can be done about this but there is no quick fix. Full speed will be reinstated if the usage falls below the limit.
The "wgb" network is intended to provide Internet access for casual visitors to the department. It is not really intended for members of the department to use, though I am well aware that it may often be the easiest network to use. Using it to check Email on smartphones and the like seems perfectly reasonable, but we really don't want it used for bulk downloads. We particularly don't want it to be used to tunnel back into the Lab, since that involves paying for the traffic to come back in over JANET.
It will not take a large reduction in usage to bring us below the threshold. If you think you might be one of the heavy users, and could arrange not to be, it would certainly be very helpful, and may enable us to avoid the hassle and cost of upgrading to an uncapped service.
