Wearables, Netflix Streaming Hit Campus Bandwidth Hard

For the first year ever, higher ed institutions have reported that they're feeling the squeeze on bandwidth consumption from wearable devices. And colleges and universities have placed TV and video consumption — and specifically Netflix — at the top of the list as the application contributing most to the growth of bandwidth demand on campus. Purely academic applications — online learning tools and digital textbooks — hardly registered a blip.

Those are a few of the new findings in this year's "State of ResNet" survey done by the Association for College and University Technology Advancement (ACUTA) and Association of College and University Housing Officers-International (ACUHO-I). The annual report analyzed responses from 450 surveys representing 320 schools across the country.

Respondents, representing IT, housing and business people on campus, were asked to rate a list of devices from 1 to 10 based on the impact each could have on bandwidth consumption for the residential network in coming years. A rating of 1 represented the smallest bandwidth consumer; 10 was the largest. The researchers then tabulated the "severity" percentages for each device by the respondents who gave ratings between 8 and 10 for each device.

Largest bandwidth-consuming devices over time (Source: "2017 State of ResNet," from ACUTA and ACUHO-I, March 2017.)

As was the case last year, computers — both desktops and laptops — appeared at the top of the list as having the most severe impact, cited by 62.3 percent of respondents, up from 58.6 percent in 2016's report. Smartphones, ranked third last year, came in second this year (61.8 percent) followed by tablets (54.2 percent). Wireless printers shot up from 7.8 percent of respondents expressing concern in 2016 to 28.8 percent saying the same in 2017. But that rating was about equal to several new categories this year: wearable technologies, wearable fitness trackers, wearable medical devices and drones, all of which hovered between 27 and 30 percent.

Largest bandwidth consumers on the campus ResNet (Source: "2017 State of ResNet," from ACUTA and ACUHO-I, March 2017.)

In a follow-on question, participants were asked to rate various applications used by student housing residents that contribute to increases in bandwidth demand. Here, entertainment rules. TV and video consumption dominated the list, with almost 88 percent of respondents rating it as severe. More general "web-based rich content," such as video, came in second at 78 percent. Online learning tools were cited as influencing bandwidth demand increases by 30 percent of respondents, and interactive digital textbooks by a mere 13 percent.

Keeping up with demand may not concern these institutions, because most practices related to constraining student access to bandwidth are down across the board. The practice of shaping and limiting bandwidth by protocol dropped from 46 percent of institutions in 2016 to 31 percent in 2017. Blocking peer-to-peer sharing and music downloads dropped from 40 percent to 34 percent over the same period. And capping network-wide throughput available to streaming video dropped from 20 percent to 11.5 percent.

Also, the report noted, schools that outsource management of the ResNet and internet "are less likely to require bandwidth management practices." Along with that, outsourcing of ResNet services is on the rise except when it comes to running the help desk.

The complete report, being formally released this week during the 2017 ACUTA Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, is available on the ACUTA website here.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • abstract illustration of a glowing AI-themed bar graph on a dark digital background with circuit patterns

    Stanford 2025 AI Index Reveals Surge in Adoption, Investment, and Global Impact as Trust and Regulation Lag Behind

    Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) has released its AI Index Report 2025, measuring AI's diverse impacts over the past year.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • lightbulb

    Call for Speakers Now Open for Tech Tactics in Education: Overcoming Roadblocks to Innovation

    The annual virtual conference from the producers of Campus Technology and THE Journal will return on September 25, 2025, with a focus on emerging trends in cybersecurity, data privacy, AI implementation, IT leadership, building resilience, and more.

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.