Don’t expect to catch up on your favorite shows during class if you go to Purdue University. That’s because the university has decided to ban Netflix and other streaming services in academic buildings. This ban extends to music streaming services as well in academic buildings on the West Lafayette, Ind., campus. The ban obviously applies if the students are using the university Wi-Fi.
Not only has the university banned access to Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services, it’s also no longer allowing firmware updates for Apple devices on the Wi-Fi network. This is the result of a pilot program that Purdue ran during the fall which prevented students from accessing five streaming services in four lecture halls.
It has now decided to extend this program to other academic buildings on the campus while also increasing the number of services that are no longer allowed. It may be blazing a new trail here as there don’t seem to be a lot of other schools that implement a similar ban.
Purdue’s executive director of information technology infrastructure Mark Sonstein told the Washington Post that this ban has been imposed in order to free up bandwidth for academic purposes.
Students will not be able to access the streaming services over Wi-Fi in classrooms, lecture halls, and labs from 7am to 10pm Monday through Friday. This ban will not be implemented in social spaces and residence calls. Students are free to use cellular data if they really want to watch the next episode of Stranger Things during class.
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