Flinders Uni to introduce internet monitoring and quota system.

Flinders University has announced to students and staff that it intends to phase in a internet usage monitoring and quota system in order to reduce the universities bandwidth costs which in 2007 is predicted to surpass half a million dollars..

Although the new system is being refereed to as a “University wide Internet quota/accounting system” it appears to be primarily aimed at curtailing the usage of undergraduate students.  Undergraduate students have been allocated a daily usage limit of 32 megabytes, after this has been used the speed of their connection is “shaped” to 64 kb/s, a speed which is lower than any commercial broadband connection and is only slightly faster than a dialup connection.

The university has avoided the use of the term monitoring in their description of the new system, however this is a function that the new system will also perform. In frequently asked questions, the university has admitted that “All internet usage is logged and reported”.

The university claims that the new system is an alternative to charging students for internet usage, or filtering certain bandwidth intensive sites. You can discuss more about this announcement on the Flinders University Student Forums in this topic