Most people can’t get through the day without it.

Others need it every couple of hours.

It’s an addiction that’s necessary.

It’s the Internet.

It is available for student use all over campus at almost all hours of the day.

Eastern installed its own Internet service in 2000 in the housing areas of campus with the highest, fastest Internet speed available at the time.

“In 2004 the administration and academic areas received similar type of processing to bring them up to speed, to a similar level” said Mark Hudson, director of Housing and Dining.

“By this time the speed (of service) was faster so we had to update ours,” said Hudson.

Eastern also has Information Technology Services on campus to help students with computer troubles.

“We have a small army of technical assistants,” Hudson said. “The problem is not always a connection issue, but a computer issue. Our staff tries to get them working as soon as possible.

When the servers are slow on campus the reason is often too many students on at once.

Hudson compares the speed of Internet service to a highway.

“The bandwidth is kind of like a highway, what moves along it is data,” Hudson said.

“The amount of highway is the bandwidth. At rush hour cars on the highway have to go slow.”

Much like the Internet, the more people taking up space on a given amount of server, the slower it goes.

“When you get 5,000 users on the campus using the servers at once, its going to be faster or slower depending on how many people (are on it),” said Hudson.

To assist students who are using the Internet for educational purposes rather than for entertainment the system is able to shape its software, allowing certain activity to have priority.

“Email has a priority over downloading music,” said Hudson.

The speed of the servers is unpredictable and changes everyday, depending on student use, as a result there is not an efficient way to alert students.

Widespread e-mail is the best way to alert the campus of important news or events, but not as effective when trying to warn students of a slow server.

“If they (ITS support) get on (the Internet) to notify people, it will slow down more,” said Hudson.

So far though, Hudson said he is pleased with the success of Eastern’s Internet access, saying the reports he gets back from students are positive.