Internet Traffic Management

Article by John Batchelder
Associate Director - Infrastructure

The Internet is an integral part of Swinburne's day to day operations, providing an essential, and heavily utilised, resource to assist Swinburne staff and students in learning, teaching, collaborating, research and administration.

In order to effectively manage the resources, the University is introducing an Internet traffic management strategy designed to:

• Ensure that the primary usage of computing resources in open access laboratories and libraries is used for academic and teaching purposes.
• Ensure the University’s policy on Internet usage is adhered to.
• Improve the usability and performance of Swinburne’s Internet connection.
• Reduce the increasing cost of Internet access across the University.

All Internet traffic incurs a cost to Swinburne and during the past three to four years, this traffic has trebled. This continuing increase in Internet traffic has also resulted in a corresponding increase in cost.

One example of excessive unnecessary use is staff listening to the radio via the internet. If staff wish to listen to the radio it would be far more cost effective to use an actual radio, not the internet.

Implementing an Internet traffic management strategy will help reduce these increasing costs while ensuring legitimate access to the Internet for academic and business purposes are not being affected in any way.

Controls will be applied on a computer and/or user basis and as a result:

• Inappropriate traffic may be stopped.
• Excessive downloading will be recorded.
• Continual excessive downloading may result in rate limiting.

These controls will be continually reviewed and monitored to ensure everyone has fair and proportional access to Swinburne’s Internet resources.

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