Ohio University's Communication Network Services wants to improve off-campus computing speeds.

Off-campus residents must use modems to connect to the Internet instead of the Ethernet connections available in the residence halls. Some modems are up to 200 times slower than Ethernet connections and they are more prone to busy signals, said Tom Reid, director of CNS.

CNS is working with Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and Integrated Services Digital Network, two types of computer hardware that "piggy-back" on telephone lines, allowing people to use the telephone and the be online simultaneously.

"You can still be surfing the web and if the phone rings, you can answer it and still be on the Internet," Hugh Woods, network operating system engineer said.

ADSL is about 10 times faster than a modem and ISDN is about five times faster. Neither is as fast as the Ethernet connections on campus, Reid said.

Neither ISDN nor ADSL is available from CNS yet because it still is experimenting with the technologies.

Many of the initial problems have been worked out, but there is still a significant hurdle remaining. Athens' phone lines are old and often the lines cannot provide the level of service needed to support these faster connection rates, Woods said.

Besides examining the computer parts, CNS also is looking at how utility companies can improve phone lines in off-campus houses.

"We want to get enough people on it to see if (the phone company) GTE can handle the usage," said Shawn Ostermann, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who has been testing ADSL with CNS.

Although technology constantly advances, getting a connection speed off-campus as fast as the Ethernet connections in the residence halls might never happen because it would cost too much to reproduce the physical facilities on OU's campus in an area as spread out as Athens, Reid said.

"None of the options we're looking at can duplicate what we have in the dorms," he said.