Thanks to the University’s Information Technology Services (ITS) and additional help from the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), students can now nurse their nighttime Internet habits at a faster pace: at 8 p.m. on Feb. 15 a boost in the bandwidth of students’ nighttime wireless and wired Internet from 130 to 200 megabytes went into effect. The boost lasts from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. each night; during the day the bandwidth returns to the former rate.

“Bandwidth is essentially a measurement of Internet speed,” said Co-Chair of the WSA-ITS Committee David Markowitz ’11. “[The increase is] good because now it doesn’t take you 15 minutes to load a video to watch for class.”

While all students will benefit from the increase in speed, ITS has put inhibitors in place to cap the amount of bandwidth available to each individual user at any given time. This prevents a small number of students from using a majority of the available bandwidth, thus slowing down the overall connection.

“It was much worse [when the Internet connection was uncapped],” said ITS Director of User and Technical Services Karen Warren. “It was a free-for-all with some people getting a lot of Internet and some not even getting to iTunes. When I first started working here, I got these horrible emails. We had to figure out a way to level it out.”

Although there have been budget cuts across the University, the bandwidth increase is a service that comes at no cost to the University.

“It’s budget neutral,” Warren said. “The theory behind this nighttime increase is that they will sell us additional bandwidth from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. for half the price of what we normally pay.”

According to Warren, reviews from students have been positive since the increase was implemented.

“A few people who have gotten back to me from various dorms have all said, ‘There’s such a difference,’” she said. “Some people have been telling me that they can easily stream content now.”

Following the bandwidth increase, ITS is looking at other changes to improve students’ Internet experience such as switching from Blackboard, the current course management system, to Moodle.

Since the beginning of the academic year, ITS has been monitoring a pilot program with Moodle. After spring break, ITS will evaluate the results of the pilot, and make a subsequent recommendation to Academic Affairs and the Academic Technology Advisory Committee as to whether the switch is advisable, according to Markowitz.