Our NSU Internet Lab

Let me ask you a question. What is the purpose of an internet lab in a university? I think it is for to enable student to access internet while they are at university. To help they to check emergency emails and collect required data. Then what’s the point of blocking websites?

Yes, there are some students who abuses this facility to download movies and TV serials. Or uses Facebook and other social networking sites for hours. To stop this abuse authorities blocks these websites. But in my University have done this blocking in extreme level.

NSU authority first blocked Facebook & Youtube. So that student can’t access them from the university 2 net labs (1 in library & 1 in SAC).  Then they have blocked Rapidshare in order to stop students from downloading movies and TV serials.  Later they have blocked other file hosting sites like Megaupload, Mediafire, Hotfiles.

These are not all NSU authorities have blocked. They also blocked several file formats. Formats like .rar, .exe. This is basically to avoid downloading viruses as most of the viruses comes in these two format.So you can’t download any files from internet in rar or exe format while you use University net labs.

I have seen few students used to write and maintain their blogs .  Creating website in blogspot is easy and that’s the reason most of them had blogs in blogspot.com. but unfortunately NSU authority have blocked blogspot too.

But yet most surprising thing they have done is blocking Yahoo mail & Live mai. Few days back I was reading prothom-alo online version when one student asked me if I can access live mail from the PC I was using.  She told me she can’t access the website. I checked and found that I can access live mai. I thought it’s just because of network connection problem. So I advised her to use another PC. But today morning I needed to download the final copy of my Finance project from my live mail account. I tried several PCs and I was surprised to see that live is blocked. Then I found the PC that I used few days back. Again I was surprised. I was able to access live mail from that PC. Then I understood some websites are blocked in few PCs and unblocked in others. I’m puzzled about how they did it and why did it.

Now I think what’s the point of providing net facility when you block websites like Dhaka Stock Exchange, File hosting sites, Social networking sites? And how will student download files when you block .rar & .exe format (those how don’t know, rar format are compressed file and .exe can be both compressed (xfx file) & executable program)? and if you block mail servers, how will student send their emails? I guess they are providing net facilities to use what remained unblocked. At present blocked websites diverts users to google. but I’m sure someday they will block google too. 😛 😛

P.S. At present Social networks Twitter & Orkut, File hosting sites uploading & fileserve are remained unlocked. And email servers are blocked in few PCs and unlocked in others. You can access other websites like online newspapers, bloging sites like WordPress, prothom-alo blog, somewhereinblog etc. But be careful don’t use much. or else they will block overused sites. 🙂