Although the pool has grown to over 300 modems, use has grown even more. In part this reflects increased instructional use of the dialup pool by students. But it also reflects increased use of the pool by faculty and staff, increased use for non-instructional purposes, and increased use by unauthorized individuals such as family members and friends.
More discussion follows.
The v.34 pool is pretty routinely maxed out, but the v.32 pool rarely is. Unfortunately, the same Ameritech switch that provides such poor throughput also is incapable of proper monitoring, but we're working with Ameritech to get a better handle on this. My sense is that we have a much bigger speed problem than busy-signal problem, but it's difficult to document this. The economics are pretty simple. To get comfortably accessible dialups, you need about 1 modem for every 10 or so possible users.