By Jonathan Smith, Managing Editor

The computer worm known as the W32.Blaster. Worm is still rampant throughout computers on the network.

Together with a host of viruses, it occasionally renders services like myACU, Webmail, Blackboard and instant messaging useless, said K.B. Massingill, chief information officer.

The problem is not with the network itself, Massingill said; computers infected with viruses use more network connections, clogging the network.

The network can support about 125,000 simultaneous connections to the Internet. When network administrators brought down the student network to assess the extent of the virus problem, the number of connections dropped from the full 125,000 to 1,700.

The problem lies mainly with student-owned computers.

“We have largely contained the virus activity on our ACU- owned enterprise, but the student network is still rampant with virus activity, and it will be until every student who owns a computer installs the virus protection software that ACU has purchased for student use,” Massingill said.

The university is offering free virus protection software for all students. This can be obtained from resident assistants and Team 55. Massingill said that all students can also help by avoiding the installation of peer-to-peer file sharing programs, such as Kazaa, which allow non-ACU users to use network bandwidth.

To curb the spread of viruses, Massingill said network administrators are “stripping files infected with known viruses off of incoming e-mail messages”

Team 55 is also trying to track down owners of infected computers, partly by turning off the ports of computers that have been infected.

However, Massingill said it doesn’t take many computers to cause a problem.

“If any one of the computers is badly infected, the virus spreads unusually fast,” Massingill said.