noticeboard.ru.ac.za

We've extended the off-peak hours of the Internet demand-side management system in order to allow staff and students to take better advantage of the spare Internet capacity that's available in the early morning. Effective immediately, the new normal term-time demand-side scale factors are:

• 23:00–00:59 — scale factor of 0.2
• 01:00–07:59 — scale factor of 0.04
• 08:00–22:59 — no scale factor (i.e. a factor of 1.0)

We've also backdated this change two weeks to the start of the current quota period, i.e. from 28 May 2009. This will mean that people who've previously made use of the Internet in the 07:00-07:59 period will see a drop in their Internet quota usage.

This change affects the normal term-time values of this system, and is independent of any concessions we might make for the forthcoming vacation.

See http://www.ru.ac.za/quota/dsm for more information about the demand-side management system and how to take advantage of these changes.

Over the last few days we've had a number of people who've overrun the end of the DSM period at 07:59. In all instances they've done so by no more than a couple of minutes, and so the likely cause was that their PCs' clocks were incorrect. The net result in each case was that the individuals went unexpectedly over quota.

Our proxy servers automatically and continuously synchronize their clocks with the National Meteorology Institute of South Africa's atomic clock, and are within a few milliseconds of South African Standard Time. They implement the beginnings and ends of the various DSM periods promptly, and to the second. As a result, it is important that users of the DSM system make sure that their computers have an accurate perception of time.

You can configure your PC to automatically synchronize its clocks with the University's time servers. This'll ensure that there's no more than a few seconds difference between your PC's clock, our proxy servers' clocks, and the atomic clock at NMISA. Instructions for doing so in Windows are available at http://www.ru.ac.za/studnet/configs/