A couple of days before going off to Debconf6 the wireless access to the Internet stopped working for me in the network of my university. I went to the network guys and they told me that I was using too much of it, so they blocked my IP address and now need to check my laptop for anything that could be of a copyright violation. When they found out that the laptop in question only has Linux installed and that the "high traffic" was mostly bunch of podcast downloads and some CD's of Linux distros (including some Dapper beta CDs), they decided to not look at my laptop (they would not know how anyway) and assured me that my laptop would be connected back the next day. I still could access the net by tethering myself to an Ethernet socked, so I was not worried.

The next day the wireless was still non-functional and so it was the day after that. I was working on with Ethernet and then left for Debconf.

Almost three weeks later I come back to the university only to find out that my wireless is still blocked. I go to computer guys again and they again assure me that it will be enabled the next day ... or at least on Monday.

During the weekend I do all I can to get my Debconf6 photos out to somewhere you could see them and do it in proper format and quality. In the end I get them uploaded to http://koyanet.lv/~aigarius/ as zip files (no compression). "aday" is the day of my arrival, "cday*" are the DebCamp days and "day*" are the main conference days with "day0" being the Debian Day.

I go home satisfied only to come back next morning and find that now _both_ wireless and Ethernet access is blocked for my laptop. Apparently my interactions with the photos and catching up on some audio and video podcasts have generated around 14 Gb of traffic (both ways summed together) and that looks to be a big NO-NO in this university.

After long and heated negotiations between my boss and the IT department the best we could agree on was that my laptop will be reconnected tomorrow, but if I use more then 2 Gb of traffic (both ways) in one month again, the laptop will be removed from the network permanently.

Wonderful studying conditions, right?

The only solution anyone could offer me is to get a ADSL connection in the place I am renting. That will cost me 12 pounds per month for "line rental" and 25 pounds per month for 8 Mbit down / 512 Kbit down ADSL connection with 40 Gb monthly traffic cap. And that is the best deal that I could find, because if I do exceed that cap for two months in a row they will not charge me per Gb as other will, but will only downgrade priority of my traffic until the end of the month. And the traffic cap in this service only applies to peak time and I can use it all I want during the night. But still the prices are just crazy and there still is a traffic limit.

Encouraging the use and discovery of new Internet technologies, right?

(.... sarcasm-o-meter overload ....)