It's just that someone needs to be honest. So I'm sitting here waiting for a page to load on my Internet browser. And waiting. And waiting. I figured, heck, I'll start writing my column while this page — from foxnews.com no less — continues to load. Then the thought hit me: Why do I pay Notre Dame for a modern, speedy Internet connection when, fresh in my mind, I can remember my modem loading pages faster at home?

Now, I have to be honest, at the current time I'm employed by the OIT and have been for years. This experience has given me a window into the inner workings of the OIT at its outermost level. Even without this information, anyone with any technology knowledge can tell you there is no acceptable reason why we should have to endure a minute(s) long wait for a page from a large national website.

There is an unacceptable reason, of course, that we do have to wait: Campus students in their dorms connect to the Internet on a totally different connection than administrators and the people working in the OIT itself. Without getting technical, imagine that our Internet connection is a roadway. All 7,000 students on campus share one road of a certain size, compared to the much lesser number of administrators and OIT workers who share a completely separate road that is 1.4 times larger. Oh yeah, and add in that they drive in a car 10 times faster than ours. We get a Dodge Neon, they get a Dodge Viper.

So while we languish in wait trying to do the most menial research, administrators and the techs who are (believe it or not) supposed to be working for us students are enjoying super-fast uninterrupted Internet. They are content to sit idly by while we experience sub-56k Internet speeds and enjoy the fast internet connection that we students are paying for, and they do this all with one flimsy excuse: MP3s.

Apparently Notre Dame is incapable of supporting a network that can transfer small three-megabyte files amongst users and the outside world. Instead of actually operating as they should — as a simple Internet service provider — the OIT has grasped onto the term "MP3" and decided to use it as a crutch and an excuse for their poor job performance.

"The campus backbone is completely maxed out, and page loading times are up to two minutes," a student complains.

"It's students and their darn MP3s," responds the OIT.

"Everyone on campus has been infected by the same destructive virus, and a hacker stole everyone's social security numbers and passwords (for the second time in two weeks)," gripes a student.

"It's all those file trading programs again, you know they spread viruses. Viruses don't use e-mail anymore," postulates an astute employee.

It's ridiculous, and I'm not buying it. You shouldn't either. The first point at issue is that it really doesn't matter what students are downloading from the Internet, barring that they're starting their own corporate websites and such. It's the OIT's job, as an Internet service provider, to provide a fast, reliable Internet connection. Let's face it; if they were AT&T, we'd have switched to Comcast long ago. Digging up excuses for why the network and Internet are slow is useless; it's their job to fix it no matter what the issue is.

Yes, and fix it for real, not fix it by breaking it. Packeteer: that's what they think will solve our networking woes. Think of it as an Internet traffic cop. It slows down information on the Internet that the OIT deems less important. This way theoretically Web pages load faster but downloads take longer. If you've ever tried to use a file-sharing program on campus, you've noted that you can download at home on a modem faster than you can here. That's because the OIT in its infinite wisdom has decided for you that those files aren't important. Of course, Packeteer does not run on the Administration/OIT connection. Again, if they were AT&T Internet, they'd be fired and we'd find something else, but they have no competition, so they just force this down our throats. I mean, what are we going to do? Complain to the administration? Yeah right, they've already been indoctrinated with the MP3 blame game, and what do priests know about the Internet anyway?

Well here's my proposition, and of course it will never happen, but I think that workers in the administration should be given access speeds to the Internet equal to the slowest speeds anyone is offered on campus. This way, day in and day out, they can see and feel the enraging slowness we experience during peak hours and perhaps gain the motivation to fix it.

Perhaps when everyone at the University comes to realize what a joke our Internet service is (you know, the one we pay for) there can be some change — say for instance the crotchety old administration squeezing out the funds needed to solve the problem. Until then the only thing we're going to get from the OIT will be blame, excuses and misguided workarounds.

• It's not that I hate the OIT
  
• U.N. leaps into Libya's lap
  
• Scully's behavior deserves reprimand