(Feb 13/12) Although the computers were replaced this year in Innis, performance has remained unchanged. Internet is very inconsistent and often doesnt work. It has been like this for my entire four years of Undergrad. The computers themselves are just as unreliable. I have been patience in waiting for upgrades, but please make sizable changes as I assure you many other students agree with me.
Library response: The replacements in Innis did not cover all of the public PCs, so it might be the case that you were using one of the older machines. We do have a separate issue with Internet. As you know, when you use our public computers, when you access a site outside of the mcmaster.ca domain space, you are asked to enter your Mac ID. This is done so that we have a log of who used the Internet and when, which is a security requirement (i.e.- not to provide open unauthenticated access to the Internet). The solution we have in place to manage that, essentially an internal proxy, has had some performance issues of late. These have been identified and we are working to mitigate them. Moreover, we are considering changing entirely how we handle this procedure, with an eye toward eliminating the proxy altogether. (Feb 27/12)
Answered by: Dale Askey (Associate University Librarian, Library Learning Technologies)
Answered by: Dale Askey (Associate University Librarian, Library Learning Technologies)