Despite inconsistent downloading access, Carleton has made no change to its policies when it comes to using torrenting software on campus Wi-Fi.
Students on the social media website Reddit noted changes from last year over which locations worked best for downloading. One student recalled previously having success last year in Frontenac, but had also noted using an Ethernet cable.
On the sub-reddit /r/CarletonU, a second-year residence student sparked an online debate when he reported having trouble downloading torrents over the Wi-Fi in Leeds residence in a post from Aug. 30.
The variety of speeds isn’t due to a Carleton Computer Services (CCS) policy, according to the school’s senior information technology security analyst, Geoff LeBoldus.
“CCS uses traffic shaping technologies to prioritize traffic,” he said. “Time insensitive traffic, such as torrenting, has a lower priority compared with time sensitive traffic, such as Skype, web or academic oriented traffic.”
“Students should be able to torrent anywhere [and anytime] on campus, depending on the amount of traffic and prioritization,” he said.
For example, if a campus building’s bandwidth can support only 10 processes, nine people could be googling while one person torrents. The person torrenting would be allotted lowest priority for bandwidth. If another person then logged on and began Googling, the person torrenting would be cut off altogether.
While torrenting is not technically illegal and unregulated by CCS, LeBoldus said students still have legal responsibilities.
“Carleton is required to ensure that the copyright law is observed. This is mostly in the area of research, papers, and textbooks. With specific regard to torrenting copyrighted software or media, Carleton is not responsible,” he said.
“Providers of Internet or network services are not liable for copyright infringement, to the extent that they are only acting as intermediaries,” he said. “Students have the same legal responsibilities as any other citizen. These responsibilities are in the law.”
Related Articles:
