University's replacement of Internet service unnecessary

Joe Congleton
DM staff columnist

Ladies and gentlemen of Ole Miss, I am very angry right now. I'm tired of Ole Miss' strange, uncanny ability to mess things up while trying to fix them. I feel like I am living in a textbook example of the "trickle-down" effect, one that hits much closer to home than anything political.

This problem comes straight from Powers Hall, through wiring that connects every dorm on campus. It comes straight from my wall into my personal computer.

According to George Carlin, there are seven words which cannot be said on television. For obvious reasons, I am not allowed to put these words in this column, but I would suggest that one more combination of letters be added to the list: DHCP.

An old expression states that, "If something ain't broke, don't fix it." Apparently, the Computer Department here has never heard this. Over Christmas break, IT replaced a system that worked perfectly, in order to say, "We've got a great new toy!"

They installed DHCP, a system that is supposed to let a computer connect from anywhere on campus without the operator having to change their TCP/IP settings.

In theory, this is a great idea. It would, if working correctly, save everyone on campus a slight bit of work whenever they moved into a new dorm, and it would save laptop users quite a bit of work because they wouldn't have to play with their settings when their computers left their rooms. But this is in theory, and in theory only.

Right now, my Internet is crippled because IT "fixed" it. My system, according to IT, is losing packets of information.

I thought this problem could be easily fixed. After about fifteen minutes of surfing the net, my system goes completely offline, and I have to go in and manually obtain a new IP address. IT should be able to fix that, right?

Not so, unfortunately. I've called the professionals at IT at least four times, only to get the complete run-around. My calls go a bit like this:

"Hi. My name is Joe Congleton, and I'm having some problems with my Internet

"What's the problem like?"

(Insert the above problem here)

"Hmmm....Your Internet is losing packets of information, and that's the network's fault. Don't worry. It's not your system. It's just that we haven't got the network working correctly yet."

"That's great. But do you realize how annoying this problem is?"

"Yeah. We promise it will be okay in about a month or so."

A month. That's a long time to have to keep manually configuring my computer so that I can have at least some form of Internet access. I beg IT to think about what they have done in "fixing" our computer system, and to work until this problem is remedied. I realize that they are working somewhat to fix it.

But if they realized just how much that I and my fellow college students depend on the Internet for information and how just about every bit of information we need for class is contained therein, they would be working overtime. And the university would be hiring in outside professionals to work on it until the problem is solved.

I have one final point to make, and then, those of you who are reading this please enjoy your mornings. If you are late paying a tuition bill, the university gets angry, correct? They send you a late notice, and charge you an extra 1.5 percent or so.

Think of the wants and needs of the student population as a kind of "reverse bill" for the university. I have sent my "late notice" in. If this problem is not resolved soon, I'm looking into good dial-up ISP's from around town. That's a shame. There used to be good, reliable, free Internet access here on campus.

Joe Congleton is a junior mathematics major from Birmingham, Ala.