Recent limits on bandwidth usage at South Dakota State University have St. Thomas students wondering if they’ll be cut off next.

While St. Thomas had to double its Internet capacity this fall, SDSU was forced to prioritize its bandwidth use on a nightly basis, limiting access to sites, like Netflix, Pandora and YouTube, that stream video and use up much of the school’s bandwidth.

Sam Levy, vice president of Information Resources and Technology and chief information officer at St. Thomas, explained that the school would not make a move like SDSU as a “knee-jerk” reaction to high bandwidth use.

“As a first move, we wouldn’t go to what SDSU did,” Levy said. “What we would do is start an educational campaign.”

SDSU’s student-run news website, The Collegian, reported that the university had to prioritize its bandwidth because students using streaming services were causing the university to come close to meeting or exceeding its 800 megabytes per second of bandwidth. Students trying to access online course materials experienced a dramatic slowdown.

Prioritizing means that from 7-10 p.m. every night, SDSU students will experience very slow or nearly impossible access to some of their favorite streaming sites, so that web-based course materials are easily accessible.

St. Thomas increased its bandwidth from 500 MB per second to 1,000 MB per second in September 2012.

“Since we raised the bandwidth, we haven’t had any serious issues,” Levy said. “Although occasionally, you will get a spike.”

Along with doubling its bandwidth, St. Thomas also bought what Levy referred to as “an Internet insurance policy.” This insurance policy is a second, fail-safe service, that gives users an alternate path to the Internet in the case the main connection goes down.

“The system will be tested in about a month,” Levy said.

Levy said students need to do simple things to counteract the problem like exiting out of their browsers and shutting down their streaming devices when not in use.

This will allow everyone to have the same access to the high speeds that their tuition helps pay for.

“We’re paying for it, so we should get unrestricted access,” junior Brandon Yapel said.

Even though students pay for their Internet access and disagree with having to abide by a bandwidth priority, senior Rob White said SDSU had to make decision to solve the problem.

“They can do what they want. It’s a business,” White said.

While St. Thomas hasn’t made any plans yet, students living on campus would not be excited about having a bandwidth prioritization happen here.

“I would not be too happy because I love my Netflix,” sophomore Alaina Wenning said. “Literally between 7-10 p.m., I’m on Netflix. It’s probably me using all the bandwidth.”

St. Thomas’ bandwidth upgrade was beneficial, but with so many students using bandwidth-sucking streaming websites, there remains a noticeable decrease in Internet speed during peak streaming hours, which are usually at night.

Levy explained that bandwidth rationing is no longer unheard of and that St. Thomas students are lucky to have nearly unrestricted bandwidth access. Levy also said further changes are on the horizon for St. Thomas’ cyber infrastructure.

St. Thomas recently received permission to complete a major network upgrade, which began in 2007. This upgrade includes new wiring, new electronic devices and new core services.

“We will be at 10 GB per second campus wide by the end of fiscal year 2014,” Levy said. “That’s another major upgrade to make sure that we stay current.”

St. Thomas’ currently has a one gigabit-per-second connection to the Internet, but the next upgrade to 10 MB per second will be to the backbone, or main data channel for the Internet.

White said that staying current is just what St. Thomas needs to keep doing, otherwise bandwidth access won’t be their only problem.

“I don’t think (prioritizing bandwidth) is a good idea,” White said. “I’m pretty sure (St. Thomas students) would hate it.”

Trevor Walstrom can be reached at wals0505@stthomas.edu.