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Technology at SCU

Campus Network

Here is the infomation you need to properly map and access the network drive shares whether you are on a Mac or on a Windows system.

See Instructions for How to Map a Network Drive

PrinterLogic (an IP based printing solution by PrinterLogic) allows us to share network printers, use SmartPrint as an on-campus printing solution for students, and the Rabbit copiers in many office locations.

For more information.

I am experiencing slowness when accessing systems on the Internet. What might be causing that?

Slowness will typically come from one of three places. Your individual computer may be slow, the site (server) on the internet that your are trying to connect to may be slow, the network anywhere in between may be slow, or any combination of these. Some of the sources for the slowness can be:

  1. SCU's network bandwidth to the internet is saturated,
  2. the system you are trying to reach is slow or down,
  3. the supporting systems to the system you are trying to reach is slow or down,
  4. network problems affecting the system you are trying to reach,
  5. network problems affecting one of the hops along the way and traffic is being rerouted to a slower hop,
  6. network problems on-campus,
  7. the page your system is trying to render may be very complicated,
  8. your machine has a virus or spyware on it.

This is not an exhaustive list. There can be problems occurring which are not listed above.

How to Help Determine Which One It Is?

There are several actions you can take to determine what is going on and generally which one is causing the problem.

The first, obviously, is to rule out your machine. Check your system for any spyware and run your anti-virus software. You can also right-click on the task bar on a Windows system, click on the Task Manager, and check the performance tab for indications. If you have access to another browser on your computer, try that and see if it makes a difference. If you have access to a second computer, give that a try. Note the differences, if any, on the steps you are trying.

Once you have ruled out your system. Do the following:

  1. Write down the site you are trying to go to (including the URL and the date and time you try).
  2. Check you on-campus network performance using our on-campus speedtest and note the download and upload speeds you get.
  3. Go to some "on-campus" web sites such as www.scu.edu, it.scu.edu, or www.cse.scu.edu. Note how long it takes to load the page. This can indicate if the problem is localized to SCU or not.
  4. Do the same thing for several well-known "off-campus" sites such as www.yahoo.com, www.google.com, www.cnn.com, or www.ibm.com. Remember to note the time it takes to load the pages. These are generally known, well performing sites and if they work well, it indicates that the problem is likely related to the original site you were trying to reach.
  5. Switch back and forth between two sites and reload the pages. Do you see any differences? This can help verify the transient nature of the problem.
  6. If you have an alternate web browser, try accessing the site with it. Some problem may be unique to a particular browser. Some sites require a particular browser for best results.

The problem may only be affecting the original site you tried, or some aspect of the network "path" between your computer and the site. If this is the case, then hopefully the problem will be fixed as the site's administrators correct the problem.

There is Still a Problem

If you are still having a problem, you can contact IT. All the information you noted will be helpful to us to try to track down, isolate, and fix the problem. It is especially helpful to have the date, time, and web address of site for each time you experienced the problem. If you do see a difference between "on-campus" and "off-campus" locations, please let us know which is slower.

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