Facts & Figures About Residential Networking

Campus Residential Networking & IT Usage
Facts, Figures, and Quotes

The Residential Network

• 64% of the $49.6 billion spent in 2010 on educational IT is on higher education. ⁶
• 75% of campus bandwidth is taken up by gaming, social networking, media, file sharing, and web browsing. ¹
• Many IT departments spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with student ResNet issues.

“70-80% of our time is spent addressing the ResNet issues. We don’t have time to focus on building a suitable network for the academic and business side. We’re held hostage by the ResNet.”
-Jessie McKneely, Director of Infrastructure & Project Management
Birmingham-Southern College

“We spend all day long monitoring bandwidth and monitoring bandwidth usage, we don’t have time to think strategically or to think about how to make the network better. Without the student network on our plate, we have been able to focus on other critical areas of IT, like implementing Internet2, bringing in storage area networks, and resolving identity management issues.”
-Dr. James Parlett, CIO
University of the Incarnate Word

• Though ResNet is critical to housing and student life, most do not consider it to be a primary function of the university.

“We aren’t in business of being an ISP for our students and it’s not the kind of business that we want to be in. We want to be able to devote attention to making a better, more secure, more reliable network for the rest of the campus.”
-Ed Fuller, Associate Vice President for ITS
Ithaca College

Student Network Usage

• Video accounts for 70-80% of all bandwidth traffic on-campus. ⁴
• Students consume 3.3 times more bandwidth than they typical Wi-Fi users. ⁴
• 15% of WiFi devices on campus are iPhones. ⁴
• On average, students spend 19-24 hours online a week ³
• BitTorrent file sharing appears on nine out of 10 university networks and uses up nearly 18% of the total bandwidth ¹
• Peer to peer file sharing takes up 22% of total bandwidth on campuses ¹

Entertainment & Social Media

• 84% of students download movies and/or music ³
• 97% of students use text messaging as their main form of communication ⁹
• 90% of students use text messaging and Social Media Sites daily ³
• 85% of college students use Facebook ⁸
• 97% of students who own a smartphone take and send photographs ⁹
• 87% of students with smart phones take and send video ⁹

Mobile Devices On Campus

• 88% of student bring a laptop to school ³
• 51% of students own an Internet capable handheld device ³
• Nine out of 10 of these students use it to connect to the Internet ³
• 48% of college students use smart phones ²
• Top 3 internet activities performed from a handheld device: ³
  1. Checking news, weather, sports
  2. Accessing e-mail
  3. Using Social Media websites
• 35% of students own both a desktop and laptop ³

Student Perspectives

• Three in five students would not go to a college that doesn’t have free WiFi ⁵
• 90% of college students say WiFi access is as essential to education as classrooms and computers ⁵
• 53% of students believe learning from streaming lectures is more efficient than sitting in class ⁷
• 74% of students believe video streaming help them prepare for exams better ⁷
• 54% of students believe video streaming helps improve their grade ⁷
• 51% of students think professors should ban the use of mobile devices during instruction ³
• 49% of students record lectures to review later if it isn’t already recorded ⁷

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References
1. Schaffhauser, Dian, “Bandwidth Battle: How entertainment is strangling education on higher ed networks,” Campus Technology (2009).
2. Carter, Dennis, “Year of the smart phone on college campuses?” eCampus News (2010).
3. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 (ECAR Research Study, vol. 6, 2009), (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE, 2009).
4. “Meraki Higher Education Wireless Census reveals colleges are at the forefront of 802.11n adoption,” (2009, November 10).
5. Schaffhauser, Dian, “College Students Find WiFi Essential to Education, Survey Reports,” Campus Technology (2008).
6. Nagal, David, “Education IT Spending, Fueled by Telecom to Top $56 Billion by 2012,” Campus Technology (2008).
7. Schaffhauser, Dian, “College Students on Streaming Video: Get me outta class!,” Campus Technology (2010).
8. Produced by Cisco Higher Education Trends & Statistics, Issue 1
9. “Smart phones displace computers for more college students,” Ball State University News Center (2010, June 15).