The increase of cell phone and calling card users is at the root of the recent network congestion problem that began one year ago.

Last year a lack of funding for the campus network prevented the expansion of the network, which has led to the recent congestion and slow speed of the network.

In past years, the Information Technology Services budget for the campus network came from a portion of each long distance telephone call made on campus. The money that was generated from the long distance calls was enough to cover expenses they needed to support network services on campus, Bill Witsman, acting director of ITS, said Tuesday.

“Problems started last fiscal year,” Witsman said. “(We were) so limited on funds.”

Witsman said because of the increasing usage of cell phones and calling cards, ITS no longer receives adequate funds form the long distance calls.

The decrease of campus long distance use resulted in a “significant” loss of funding for ITS and the staff could not update the network which caused the recent congestion and slow down of the network, Witsman said.

“There’s a point when you have a traffic jam and that’s when you really notice it,” he said about the recent network congestion. “It kind of caught up with us.”

In order to speed up the network, Witsman said six new network routers have been ordered and once installed they will better direct Internet traffic.

The $65,000 of funding for the new routers will come from a combination of state appropriated dollars and tuition fees.

However, despite the recent state budget callback of $2.3 million from Eastern’s budget, Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs, said Tuesday that the $65,000 is being allotted to the ITS budget because it is a “high-need area.”

However, Witsman said, if not for the state budget callback ITS would have an additional $65,000 to spend to support other aspects of technology services this year.

“(It) reduced spending by a significant amount,” he said. “We have to be very careful on what we spend.”

Although there has been congestion in the network recently, Witsman said last week’s Internet failure was because of a problem in the renovated Booth Library, while workers were installing a switch that controlled one of the six different sections of the library. The switch problem caused the entire campus network to crash for more than three hours.