[Publib] bandwidth

[Michelle Bradley]

If anyone has any input on this situation, I would sure appreciate it:

We have been experiencing extremely slow Internet connections.  So slow, that we cannot do online ordering, open pdf files, etc.  Our IT people say it is our patrons using all of the bandwidth downloading movies, playing games, etc.  They also say that getting additional bandwidth would do us no good, because patrons will just suck up whatever we have unless we prohibit them from gaming, streaming media, downloading media, etc. 

 I am having a hard time believing this.  First of all, we don't see our patrons doing a lot of downloading of movies, etc.  They are mainly surfing, filling out job applications, typing resumes, etc.  Yes, there is some gaming going on.  We want our patrons to be able to access streaming media, gaming etc.  

Are others experiencing this problem with patrons hogging bandwidth?  Have you restricted their use of certain activities that will use a lot of bandwidth?  If so, how have you restricted them?  Are there libraries out there who let their patrons do these types of activities without adverse effects to the network speed?

We have 512K access.  We have 23 public computers, and 70 total computers on the network.  We have a separate wireless network.  

Michelle Bradley
Assistant Director
Frankfort Community Public Library
Clinton County Contractual Public Libraries
208 W. Clinton St.
Frankfort, IN  46041
765-654-8746
www.accs.net/fcpl
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20070129/e993fb0c/attachment.htm