Metropol

Speaking of telephones and broadband internet, I've heard that some places have very restricted internet access (ie. certain ports, protocols and sites blocked/filtered) and telephones that charge a fortune for incoming and outgoing calls.

Some halls provide a standard BT phone line which you are at liberty to have connected yourself. Disadvantages of this are being tied to a contract period and that you can't call internally. Advantages however are that you can enjoy paying decent rates for calls and can get unmetered dialup or ADSL if it's in your area.

Most halls however have some god forsaken internal phone system which charges ridiculous rates for outgoing calls, ridiculous rates for people calling you, and usually you have no way of getting unmetered internet access from them. The internet access in particular can be a problem since not everywhere has network access.

In my time whilst there were policies to prevent you from using filesharing software and messenger programs on the uni's own computers, you were perfectly at liberty to do whatever the hell you wanted on your own, even though you were using a university connection, I understand now though that Plymouth have restricted your access somewhat, something I believe is becoming increasingly commonplace.

At Coventry there is free broadband Internet in selected halls, including mine. The main problem is that it has been royally fucked up by our Computing Services department.

We had a brief period where Messenger was banned. A revolt saw that reversed in 5 days.

Then there was the time the network went down for 6 days.

Now we have to go into a website and login before we can use anything.

10Mb/s connection is all well and good, but you really can do naff all with it.

Like use WinMX, Kazzaa et al.

Well somehow, my mate next door (my street is one of those little Welsh valleys ones on a 90 degree slope!!!), has set up a wireless network and already has 5 computers hooked up to broadband (and one computer in my house). He's got a 1.5MB NTL connection split 5-ways. Of course, not everyone is going to be heavily using the Internet at any one time, so I personally think it's a great set-up.

However, I'm always different, and I have my own 750K NTL connection!

Aberystywth's internet connections is just a normal connection to the University's network as you would on any public workstation. There are restrictions on using P2P but that's about it, anything else is availiable!

This gives the good option of, if you have a laptop being able to connect to the network at any availiable socket on campus! and use the wireless features that are being installed this term.

There was no phoneline tho, but most students now have mobiles which are probably cheaper!

Gareth