According to Director of Information Technology Phil Fitz, the company was scheduled to install equipment that would have doubled the school's bandwidth from three megabits per second to six megabits per second in January. He said that by Jan. 17 the company had completed a large portion of the installation process, but on Jan. 18 it announced that it will be shutting down on March 1.
"My gut reaction is that it's a minor setback," Arthur Lord '03 said. "It's definitely frustrating because a lot of people have worked really hard towards this. It's taking longer than we anticipated, but we are in good hands."
Fitz added that the College had done extensive research, determined that Vitts Networks was a "good solid company" and was scheduled to complete all its work at the College by Jan. 24. He said that the company had been in business for five years, and was selected largely because it had the ability to complete the bandwidth increase before the start of the spring semester.
According to Fitz, the company's failure was due to the "dot-com shakeout," which affected many high-tech companies in late November. He said investors became leery of high-tech companies and thus were unwilling to provide investment monies to startup companies.
Fitz estimated that now the bandwidth increase would not be completed until, at the earliest, April, but possibly not until June. He said that predicting when the increase could take place is difficult because many other high-tech companies are experiencing problems similar to those that put Vitts out of business.
Fitz added that Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, which had also planned bandwidth increases through the University of Massachusetts, have experienced similar problems and delays.
Fitz said that while he continues to look into ways to increase bandwidth, he plans to continue prohibiting the use of Napster and other such programs. He said that once the use of programs like Napster is effectively blocked, Internet speed will increase slightly because its use will be limited primarily to academic purposes.
However, Fitz said that even though the College's attempt to increase its bandwidth has been slowed, it is on track with its conversion to a new email system. The new Windows NT-based email program will support any email reader that uses IMAP (a program that leaves mail on the server). The system enables users to access their email accounts from any computer on campus.
According to Desktop Computing Associate Nicholas Dahlman, the College will permanently discontinue the use of VAX next September. Students will have until late April to switch to the new system, while seniors have the option of switching or continuing to use VAX until they graduate.
According to Fitz, most students should be able to complete the switch to the new system in under one hour. He said that many resources to assist students in completing the process are available, including a website and student help.
"We have tried to make this as easy as we can and we believe most students will be able to do it using the instructions on the website," Fitz said. He added that testing has removed all the kinks in the switch-over process and that the system is nearly foolproof.
In addition to being faster and handling larger attachments, the new system also runs virus protection software that catches and quarantines emails that have viruses, sending a warning to users who would have otherwise received the virus.