Most of us know of ITS. Yes, they’re the ones who deleted Limewire from your computer when you registered on the Choate Network. Because the ITS headquarters is located up at Brownell, not much is known about what they do. Several rumors and myths have spread about ITS and the famous Mr. Andrew Speyer, who some still believe is not a person but rather Big Brother watching over us. Some say that ITS has a secret underground fortress protected by dragons and protective charms; however, the likelihood of a secret lair fitting into the Choate budget is slim to none. As all of the returning students know, every year seems to bring up a new issue with the network. Two years ago, it was the infamous AIM problem, where AIM would mysteriously shut off during the time of 7:30 to 9:00, and 9:30 to 11:00. Last year, of course, was the issue with the LAN gaming network. Sadly, the hours spent playing Halo campus wide came to an abrupt end when Mr. Speyer, responding to Deans’ Office policy, put his foot down and terminated a helpful stress reliever that Choate students could turn to in times of need.
This brings us to this year’s issue: YouTube. Everyone is familiar with the innumerable videos that YouTube hosts. The best part of YouTube is that anyone can upload videos for people to watch, so whether you’re making a silly video with friends, or recording a school performance, you can upload it for everyone’s enjoyment. However, over the past few weeks, YouTube has slowed down to a crawl until finally videos could not even finish loading. I was expecting YouTube to work perfectly after hearing about the speed upgrade that ITS supposedly implemented over the summer. Not only were my expectations let down, but the sheer inconvenience of not being able to get my fix of online entertainment put me in a state of shock.
However, Mr. Speyer reports that ITS did not intentionally slow down YouTube—instead there was a technical issue which needed fixing. In addition, I think ITS deserves credit for how quickly they corrected the problem. Although many complain about the speed with which ITS fixes problems, keeping an entire school connected cannot be an easy task. We cannot expect the Internet always to be fast when hundreds of people are using the network. That said, the Internet has certainly improved over my course of time at Choate. My third form year, sometimes the Internet was so slow that even simple websites like Google wouldn’t load. Although it would be nice if ITS didn’t shut off the Internet at night and allowed us to play Halo on the LAN again, I would say that overall Big Brother treats us pretty well.
