All students are allocated monthly internet quotas. The quota relates to the amount of information (megabytes or MB) downloaded from the internet in the student laboratories or via the wireless network on campus, it does not relate to time spent browsing on the internet.
Internal traffic from within the University (such as internal lecture notes, intranet, your VU email etc) does not count towards this quota.
A monthly allocation is granted to enrolled students. Your quota should be sufficient for your academic work.
Your quota is refreshed at the start of each month, if you use your quota before the end of the month, you can still access the internet, but at a slower speed.
Using your Victoria University student email will not count towards your internet quota. However, your quota will be affected if you access external email services such as Gmail or Yahoo.
You can login to monitor your internet quota.
The time of day and the sites you use impact your internet quota.
Your quota is used when you access the internet during peak hours and only includes traffic that is not classified as on-net.
All traffic during off-peak hours is free and doesn’t count towards your quota.
On-net downloads don't count towards your quota. To determine whether the download source is classified as on-net traffic or not, check the AARNet3 Network Address Query website.
Most universities and research communities around the world are known to be on-net. This is especially relevant for Open Source software or file downloads. If there is more than one source available, consider downloading from mirror sites that are on university or research community networks.
Through AARNet peering arrangement with various content providers, content retrieved from Microsoft, YouTube, Google, Akamai, and Amazon Web Services are now classified as on-net. This means downloading large multimedia files from those sources does not count towards your quota. Please note that the download source means the URL of the actual file to be downloaded and not the website where the URL is posted.
In addition, because the classification of download source could change without notice, please be sure to check the AARNet3 Network Address Query website to make sure the download source is still classified as on-net before you proceed to download a large file.
We advise that you download or access any large files during the off-peak periods to minimise the internet quota usage count. That is, all internet traffic downloaded during off peak periods is free of charge and will not count towards the internet usage quota.
When you enrol at Victoria University you will receive an Active Directory login, use this Active Directory login to access the student computers in the PC labs or other Windows PCs. Once you have logged into Active Directory you will have access to use the internet on computers at VU.
If you do not log in to Active Directory (i.e. in Macintosh laboratories) you will be prompted via a pop-up window to log in prior to accessing the internet.
You can start using the internet when your enrolment is complete and you have received the details of your Active Directory account.
Authentication occurs when you log in to Active Directory. You won't need to log in again to use the internet.
Your quota is determined by the amount of information you download from the internet, not by the time you spend on the internet.
If you exceed your monthly quota you can still access the internet. However, your internet speed will be reduced to 64KB per second for the remainder of the month. Your quota will reset at the start of each month.
Yes, you can view your internet usage and available quota by logging into the Internet Account Management System.
No. Network traffic received from within the University does not count towards your quota, this includes internal websites such as VU's intranet, lecture notes, library catalogues, VU email, VU Collaborate etc.
Your quota limit will be affected when accessing external email such as Yahoo and Gmail.
No, library databases are stored locally on Victoria University owned servers, so they do not count towards your quota allocation.
6GB for undergraduate students and 7.5GB for postgraduate students should be more than enough for academic purposes. If you use your monthly allocation, you will still have internet access, but at lower speed of 64KB per second.
Your account will last as long as you are enrolled at the University. Your account will expire when you have completed your studies and your Active Directory Login has been disabled.
