Track: Service Systems and Service Management

Abstract

Bandwidth distribution and network resource allocation are the main challenges of the IT department of any university, since it directly affects the quality of education. The users of a university campus network are mainly faculty, administrative staff, and students. It is important to fairly distribute and allocate the user’s share of bandwidth. Therefore the index of fairness is considered as the main university campus network performance criterion. In this paper a generic model of the fairness index is presented to analyze the reasons for its application and the benefit of its implementation. An educational institute located in Alexandria, Egypt, with a total number of thirty-two buildings, that contains four Colleges with around 350 faculty members, 1200 technical and administrative staff and 5000 students, is taken as a case study. Data from the campus data center is collected and the index of fairness is measured and elaborated. The results indicate an unfair network resource allocation and therefore suggestions for improving the bandwidth distribution, which directly impacts the user’s satisfaction, are proposed.