Student site overwhelmed

The first week of classes recorded unusually high use of INSITE, IU's online access to scheduling, advising, bursar accounts and financial aid, causing students and faculty frustration and missed classes.\nThe sheer number of students accessing their class schedules for the new semester overloaded the servers and made logging onto the network difficult, if not impossible.\nChristine Fitzpatrick, Manager, Communications and Planning for UITS said the problems were caused by too many people attempting to log onto the system. \n"The system just got bogged down on the first days of class," Fitzpatrick said. "Contributing to the problem was the fact that the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses started classes on the same day."\nINSITE, Indiana Student Information Transaction Environment, can currently handle 525 simultaneous attempts to login for all IU campuses. The vast majority of INSITE users were using it to print out schedules, she said. \nFreshman Katie Martin found efforts to log on INSITE nearly hopeless.\n"It was impossible to get on INSITE," Martin said. "I needed to get my schedule before classes, and I sat around for forty-five minutes before I could even log on."\nFreshman Adam Steer ran into the same problem.\n"I had no idea where I was going on my first day of classes," Steer said. "I couldn't print out my schedule, so I had no clue."\nBut students are not the only people on the Bloomington campus who use INSITE, Edward Robertson, associate dean of academic affairs and undergraduate education for the School of Informatics, said.\n"Faculty need to use the system too, for things like advising," said Robertson. "The limited access doesn't affect just the students."\nPart of the problem with INSITE is the excessive use this first week of class. Senior Laura Blanford, UITS employee, said part of the problem is procrastination on the students" part.\n"INSITE had about one million hits this week, and I'm sure a lot of it is students trying to get their schedules at the last minute," Blanford said. "The system just can't handle that many people at once."\nDespite the problems with INSITE during the first week, there seems to be nothing inherently wrong with the system. Secure systems have limited access, which protects the privacy of the information stored inside. \n"Of course the system can be improved if money was no object," Robertson said. "But who would be willing to pay the tuition surcharges to pay for the improvements? Also, privacy is an issue. How much do you care that the whole world can't see your grades and bursar account status? A less secure system would allow easier access, but at the cost of privacy." \nUITS is migrating INSITE to a new server to combat the problems experienced this week. \nThat will allow more simultaneous logins without compromising the security of the system, Fitzpatrick said. She doesn't anticipate any more problems with the system before the migration can be completed.