On-campus residents with computers are being watched.

Due to a problem with computer traffic, Penn State now is monitoring student uploads, or the information that is being sent outside to the Internet. They will not be looking at the content of the data being sent, just the amount.

On Sept. 12, the university set up an automatic restriction that limits student uploads to 12,000 megabits per week. Students are monitored on a weekly cycle that starts each Sunday.

"The limit in place right now controls traffic sent (or uploaded) to sources outside of Penn State," said Joel Weidner, the associate director information systems for auxiliary and business services.

The limit is part of an attempt to decrease dorm consumption of the university's bandwidth. Bandwidth is the size and speed of the "pipe" that connects computers to the local network and the Internet, according to the ResCom Web site, www.rescom.psu.edu. This "pipe" transports data back and forth between computers and the Internet. The entire university, including students, researchers, libraries, computer labs, staff and faculty share the bandwidth. When people use too much bandwidth, it slows everyone's connections down.

Last year, the university noticed that the connection was at maximum capacity, causing slowness and loss of connection for all Penn State users. After analyzing the traffic, the university discovered that a small group of users in the dorms accounted for a large percentage of the bandwidth use, Weidner said.

"That's where we saw a bottleneck, so we're limiting uploading as of now — not downloading," he said.

When students use 60 percent of their allowed bandwidth, they will receive a warning via e-mail. Once the student hits the limit of 12,000 megabytes, another warning is sent and the student's allowable bandwidth is restricted to 56,000 kilobytes per second for the rest of the week. Offenses after that result in a restriction to 56,000 kilobytes per second for the remainder of the week or possibly the semester. When students violate the restriction for the fourth time, they risk losing their Internet connection completely.

These limits could change — either up or down. The next restriction could involve downloads, Weidner said.

If students receive e-mail warnings and do not know what they did wrong, they can contact ResCom.

Some activities that generate the most use of bandwidth include running Web servers, file transfer protocol servers and music sharing programs, such as Napster, Morpheus and KaZaA.

"Many use sharing programs to get files, but don't realize that it allows others to get their files — making it a server," Weidner said. "Uploading of music files, videos and pictures takes up most of the bandwidth."

Viruses that allow someone else to control a student's computer without the owner's knowledge compromise computers, he said.

Information that is shared within Penn State, such as e-mail, does not count toward bandwidth usage, but uploads from using an e-mail server other than Penn State's, such as Hotmail or America Online, count against the set limit. AOL's Instant Messenger generates bandwidth as well, but since it is primarily text, it is only a minimal amount.

Weidner said computer users should review the network restriction agreement to understand the valid and invalid uses of uploading.

For many students, the first e-mails are their introduction to bandwidth and excessive uploads. Some students said the decreasing bandwidth is not a problem.

"I actually thought the amount they limit you to is plenty," said Bart Thornburg (sophomore-management science and information systems). "I don't think this restriction will really affect me."

Weidner said everyone's participation in decreasing bandwidth is necessary.

"A great majority of students are using the network responsibly, but it doesn't take much for a small group to use up the resources," he said.