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Modem telephone connections keep e-mail traffic heavy at night
By Ryan McGee Special to the Kansan
KU students can send mail all over the world instantly — for free.
But they may have to do it at 5 a.m.
The mail is electronic mail, or e-mail, and any KU student can send and receive it. But the student must get an account through Academic Computing Services and must have a computer connected to the University's network.
The problem is getting connected. A student must be either on a campus computer that is directly connected to the Computer Center or on a computer that has a modem for connecting through telephone lines.
These modem telephone connections are the biggest problem, said Wes Hubert, manager of system integration at computing services.
"The major limitation at this time is connectivity," Hubert said. "Usage patterns on the dial-in connections show the busiest times of day begin in late afternoon and continue until past midnight. The easiest way to avoid a busy signal is to use the dial-in connections during the morning."
Although this may not necessarily mean getting up at 5 a.m. for high-quality time with the computer, it does mean that the hardest times to get dial-in access are the same times that students are most likely to want to get connected.
It's rush hour on the information superhighway, so to speak.
And students such as Austin Beine, St.
Louis sophomore, aren't happy about it.
"The worst problem was trying to dial up and not being able to get through," Beine said. "They need more lines or something."
Beine is only one of more than 2,400 students who have University e-mail accounts, which give holders the ability to send and receive e-mail and help the computers route incoming e-mail messages.
Hubert said computing services was working on the number of phone lines available for dial-in access.
"A year ago most dial-in access to KU computing was through two phone numbers, each connected to a rotor with 16 lines."Hubert said.
Sixteen lines were added last fall, he said, and eight lines recently were upgraded for higher data transmission speed. Equipment for 16 more lines has been purchased and is awaiting installation, he said.
These lines may not solve the problem, however. Hubert said that about 50 new email accounts were opened each week and that about 30 new accounts were activated each day in the wake of a newspaper article such as this one.
E-mail isn't the only thing available to holders of e-mail accounts.
Hubert said that e-mail accounts provided users with access to KUFACTS, an online campuswide information service with information including athletic events schedules, timetables, theater schedules and general information about the University.
E-mail accounts also allow access to the Internet, a network of computer networks reaching across the globe.
mail:info@databank.com
telnetable:bbs.databank.com
Voice: 913-842-6699 1473 Hwy.40, Lawrence, KS
April 20, 1994 THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN • INSIDE KU
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