unreasonably bad internet speeds
 

Regardless of where I have been the past few days whether it is my room, the library, or hall of sciences the internet has been almost unusable. The wireless is almost non existent, and a wired connection can scarcely be called better. It takes multiple refreshes of the browser just to check email. Has anyone else had a problem with this?

I've been having issues with my internet being really slow too. But some people around me have had no issues at all. I've tried checking to see if it was my the wall port on my side of the room, but it wasn't.

It looks like we're having a problem with malware that's causing lots of additional network traffic, and we're trying to figure out what exactly it is and how to deal with it. We will know more shortly.

This is ridiculous ESPECIALLY because its high times for research and final papers!

How are we supposed to get work done, when it is required by our professors to use mulitple sources, including ones from the internet?

I hope this gets taken care of IMMEDIATELY!

We can't just wave a magic wand and fix the problem. We have however identified the trojan and the Helpdesk knows how to remove it. Please call them if your computer is slow--it turns out that removing the trojan improves individual computer performance. We're trying to figure out how to identify and help remove the infection from affected computers.

It is the responsibility of the ENTIRE Drew community, "us" students included, to prevent malware from infecting our network. I don't think "we" students understand that using unsafe file-sharing programs, such as frostwire and edonkey, causes the ENTIRE DREW COMMUNITY to be susceptible to malware because we are all connected through the network. Maybe if "we" stopped being selfish about how "we" use the network, "we" wouldn't have problems when "our" exams and final papers rolled around.

Virus & Trojan Infections
 

In 20 years in the field, I've noticed that virus/trojan infections have begun to peak around either finals or midterms. Whether that's a concious design on the part of the malware creators (and sometimes it is) or just a function of increased usage/steadily increasing infection over a semester, I don't know. Perhaps we just notice the infections more when we're under a deadline!

Anyway, call the helpdesk for information about removing the trojans-- if you can remove them and keep them off, the system goes LOTS faster.

Jenne,

We did notice this getting bad right after Thanksgiving (that's also another inflection point--people bring their computers home, and often pick up different things while traveling). We think it was around for a while causing trouble, but not at a level that was as easy for us to identify. We've moved from the identification and contiainment phase to the removal phase now, at least.

To clarify, this was intended to be posted in the technology section not gripes and was posed as a question to see if there was something wrong my computer or the network as a whole. Complaining without adding to the discussion does nothing. Hopefully the Soviets back off soon and we can return to normal.

Good Talk!