The University Record, April 1, 1997
Computer, technology use on campus is high
From the Information Technology Division
How many e-mail subscribers? How many computing accounts? How many phone calls? University of Michigan students, faculty and staff use information technology services in astonishing amounts. Some facts and figures:
Students and Computers
Nearly 60 percent of U-M students say they own a computer—that’s nearly 22,000 student-owned computers.
90 percent of incoming freshmen now arrive at U-M with at least three years of computing experience.
50 percent of incoming undergraduates say they have used a computer to read e-mail or bulletin boards before coming to U-M (up from 30 percent in 1994).
Once on campus, more than 90 percent use e-mail.
WorldWide Web Sites
The U-M’s Web site (http://www.umich.edu/) fields about 27 million requests per month or 900,000 requests per day. That’s 37,000 requests per hour.
Many individual departments, schools, and colleges operate their own Web servers, so the actual amount of Web traffic on campus is considerably higher.
Administrative Computing
The University’s administrative mainframe computer is accessed more than three million times per month for information. That’s 4,032 times per hour or 67 times per minute.
During student registration, the administrative mainframe is accessed 5.5 million times per month. That’s 7,392 times per hour or 123 times per minute.
Telephone Service
U-M has the largest privately owned telephone system in the United States.
More than 17 million phone calls are received and made at U-M per month. That’s more than 700,000 phone calls per day or more than 480 phone calls per minute.
About 82 percent of those calls are internal to the University.
There are more than 18,000 voice mail subscribers on two voice mail systems.
Campus Networking
There are 70 miles of fiber optic cable connecting 160 U-M buildings and 30 miles of fiber optic cable inside buildings, including University Hospitals. Laid end-to-end, the cable would stretch nearly all the way from Ann Arbor to Grand Rapids.
Broadband cable is available in 65 buildings and carries 60 channels, or circuits, for applications such as high-speed data transfer, broadcasting, video conferencing, interactive multimedia and cable television.
ITD has installed 270 local area networks across the Ann Arbor campus, with an estimated 15,000-20,000 connected workstations.
All residence halls are wired with Ethernet for Internet connectivity.
Fifteen buildings at the U-M-Dearborn campus are connected to a fiber optic cable network.
Nine buildings at the U-M-Flint campus are connected to a fiber optic cable network.
