Internet Upgrade
Last semester in July, the internet had been pretty decent, fast enough for Skype and YouTube. However, this semester, I noticed that the internet speed had slowed down a lot, due to the increase in number of students on campus this semester, and unfortunately, the unfair hogging of the internet by the several individuals who have found ways to breach the firewalls and participate in excessive downloading (which is in violation of the Student Handbook Internet Policy). Because of the internet issues, the Student IT Committee, students, IT staff and administrators here on the St. Maarten campus informed the AUC administrative office in Miami of our needs and requested to double our bandwidth. AUC’s administrative office in Miami responded by tripling our bandwidth from 10 Mbps to 30 Mbps. Thank you to all those who have handled this issue patiently and constructively, and to everyone for this much-needed upgrade.
Sitting here in the student lounge using the school WiFi on my laptop, I ran some bandwidth tests today from www.speedtest.net. Here are the results:
As it is Saturday, and I see only 4 other people in the lounge using their computers, perhaps these numbers will be lower during normal school hours when more people are using the internet. I’ll have to run further tests later on to get a more accurate portrayal of the school’s internet speed.
Hey Benji,
These figures are wildly inaccurate for the current state of the internet at AUC now. I just ran a test to confirm my suspicions, and the results in the dorm are 0.8 Mb/s download and 1 Mb/s upload. The internet is unbearably slow. It’s nothing even near your test result of 30 Mb/s. Maybe they downgraded the internet or something since you left the island.
Hey Sam,
Thanks for the update. I know that they only recently installed wireless Internet in the dorms this past semester, so it is new. It’s unfortunate to hear it is slow. The tests I did were from the cafeteria when they first upgraded many semesters ago and it was pretty sweet. Hope you’re doing well and thanks for writing.
Benji