ResNet Outsourcing

For many institutions, providing high quality networking service for residential students has become increasingly complex, expensive, and a significant drain on staff resources. Uncontrolled viruses and worm outbreaks fueled by unprotected student computers, ever increasing demands for bandwidth for peer-to-peer and other high-bandwidth applications, and increasing legal activity around file sharing have all combined to negatively impact networking and computer performance and increase support demands at a time of constrained budgets and staff resources. At Ithaca College all of these issues came to a head during the Fall 2003 semester, and resulted in the decision to outsource ResNet operations for 4,400 residential students beginning in the Fall of 2004. During this session two administrators from Ithaca College will discuss the factors that led to the outsourcing decision, the issues they dealt with during the transition, and their experience with the outsourcing venture to date.