Capacity shortfalls hinder registration system

After facing a whirlwind of problems in the past, officials for Information Technology Services said the group saw its most successful registration period to date Saturday.

Although the registration servers have had problems in the past, ITS has upgraded the system and expects the remaining sessions to run smoothly.

But students might still experience some difficulty signing on to the registration system as fast as they want to, said Joel Dunn, acting executive director of administrative information services.

"We can never process things as well as people would want them," he said. "We would like everyone to have a one-second response time, but that would require an investment in hardware and software that would be quite substantial."

Senior psychology major Lauren Proctor said it took her more than 30 minutes to register.

"I couldn't log into Student Central for about 10 minutes, and then I couldn't even get to the page to register, and then I couldn't get to the class page, and then if that didn't work, it logged me out, and I had to start all over again," she said.

Dunn said that because the student database can only accept so many transactions at a time, registration servers buffer to slow students down.

"I'll be the first to admit that we've had glitches over the years," Dunn said. "We've had growing pains as more people have tried to register online."

Instead of allowing students on registration servers when they reach capacity, Student Central will stop admitting them and deliver an error message.

Despite improvements in the servers, Dunn said he wouldn't be surprised if the response times were up to a minute long during the first five minutes of registration.

Last spring, 2,596 students registered in the first 15 minutes of senior registration. This year, 2,672 registered in the same time period.

"Over time, we've architected a system that we believe will allow us to meet the initial capacity of demand without having to commit an extreme amount of hardware that only gets used a couple of times a year," Dunn said.

Because of this fact and the cost of the system, the servers probably always will have delays of some sort, said Megan Bell, assistant vice chancellor for communications. "The system itself has a capacity, and this system has a cost. We have to find the perfect balance," she said.

University Registrar David Lanier said ITS has increased its server capacity each year.

"I think we have it close to the demand," he said. "A few years ago, there was a time after the first five or 10 minutes when the system would slow down, and it would take 10 or 15 minutes before it started up again."

There are several things students can do to make registration more efficient, Dunn said.

"If enough people click 'stop' and 'reload,' it makes the entire problem worse," he said.

Dunn also suggested that if students aren't concerned about classes filling to capacity, they should wait to sign on until after the first 30 minutes of registration.

Despite the improvements to this year's registration session, ITS already is preparing for next year.

"This is one of those things where you're never done," Dunn said. "We work for you guys, and we want to try to provide as good a service as we can."

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