The purpose of this survey is to determine the actual speed experienced by the students from their respective colleges through WIRED and WiFiUTM network and eventually to take the necessary actions to improve the connection speed to an acceptable speed rate.

Brief Introduction

The number of Access Points (AP) installed with the total of around 890 APs:

College	1st phase (Mac 2007)	2nd phase (2008)	3rd phase (2009-2010)	Total
KRP	3	23	37	63
KTR	3	24	37	64
KTF	3	24	36	63
KTHO	3	24	37	64
KTDI	3	23	34	60
KTC	3	24	43	70
KP	3	12	-	15
K9	3	10	54	67
K10	3	10	52	65
K11	3	-	-	3
KDSE	3	13	90 (in progress)	106
KTGB	3	12	90 (in progress)	105
KDOJ	3	15	60 (in progress)	78

The colleges with WIRED network are KP, MA1 (K11-College 11), L12 (KTHO), G29 (KRP), S46 & S47 (KTC), and some are still under construction such as H25 (KTF), K11 (KTR), G30, G31 & G32 (KRP).

One thing we have to keep in mind is that the wireless (shared) access is not as fast/good/reliable as the wired (dedicated) connection. And the number of users connected simultaneously to an AP are limited (~15 users) with only 3 non-overlapping channels namely channel 1,6 and 11 unlike 3G or 4G spectrum in which all adjacent channels are using different frequencies and non-overlapping.

One of the problems we are facing in providing a good WiFiUTM coverage is the disturbance from Rogue AP (the APs that are installed by the students without our consent) as shown in the picture below (in K15). The conflicting channels used by those APs will result in reduction of the speed to the AP and to the network itself.

Rogue APs in K15 are listed below (we are going to trace them as we have captured their location and MAC addresses). There are many more in other colleges.

Until the problems related to these rogue AP are solved, we are going to experience slowness in the access speed (it is a kind of chicken and egg problem-students say WiFiUTM is slow and we say your rogue APs are disturbing our APs because they (without realizing it) are using the same channels that WiFiUTM's APs do).

Example of APs installation in Bayview Hotel WiFi network in Langkawi. Note the absent of rogue APs!


Please go to these websites and record the download speed in the survey form given below. We thank you for your patience, help and coorperation.

http://speed.utm.my (internal access)
From the current result of this survey (see the statistics below), we can see that majority experience a VERY HIGH INTERNAL SPEED (>10 Mbps) at which the internal sites (such as elearning, student.blog, UTM Library, UTM FREE download software archive, AIMS2000, UTM Institutional Repository, UTM Online, Applications System, Anti-Virus Software, FKM Computing Facilities, FSKSM Free Software Archive, FP Pusat Sumber, FAB Journal, FKE Journal, FKM Journal, FSKSM Publication, JCNRE Journal, MATEMATIKA Journal, Jurnal Kemanusian, Journal of Fundamental Sciences, DIGITAL Thesis, etc) can be accessed in a split second! This is one of the main priorities in providing CollegeNet, that is to provide fast access to the local contents for teaching, learning and research (TLR). We believe that faculties (UTM) are working hard in increasing local contents for the sake of TLR (try accessing the sites listed above) so that the external access can be minimized.

http://speed.time.com.my (external excess)
We are aware of the slow speed to the external sites and that is mainly due to the limited gateway bandwidth of 100Mbps/200Mbs shared by a large number of students in all 17 colleges.

• We are planning to set a MAXIMUM limitation bandwidth at which a user can access (to the external sites; internal access will be unlimited as we have 1Gbps link connected to each colleges) so that we have a fair share of the available (100Mbps/200Mbps) bandwidth (e.g only up to 384kbps or 512kbps or 1Mbps per user).
• From the BW manager (installed on March 7th, 2011) the top application used by students is P2P which consumes 68.2% (56.3%+11.9%) of the bandwidth as shown below (all P2P apps are blocked now and each college is allocated up to only 20Mbps so that no college can monopolize the BW). A P2P app is mainly used for sharing Music, Movies, Games and very famous for distributing pirated software.
  
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• The sites that are visited by majority of the students mostly for entertainment as shown below.
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• We are in the process of implementing quota-based system so that each user can have a fair-sharing of the bandwidth allocated for college network (e.g. each student is allocated a web traffic quota of 1GB per week) and all 'bad' activities over the internet will be recorded.
  
  
  
• In the meantime we would like to suggest that students use the WIRED and faster network in the labs in their faculty to do heavy downloading, researching, etc. The key point here are managing time in critical period and doing research in the labs not in the residential rooms.

The current statistics are here.

Thank you for your time.