From: Ed Melchior <melchioe@mail.uww.edu>
Being a "LOCAL network administrator", I have a few points to make and
questions to ask you.
Personally, as a musician, computer enthusiast, and a rabid music fan (my
wife and I have about 2500 CDs, about 1000 vinyl records, and several
hundred cassette tapes), I'd love to see a world where anyone could
download anything, free of restrictions, as long as the musicians get paid
in some way. (Napster has conveniently forgotten about the musicians who
are being deprived of legitimate earnings. Granted, they probably make too
much, just like my friend Bill Gates take too much profit from each sale of
his software, but some of the folks in that equation actually do work to
make that product, unlike the somewhat parasitical record companies).
However, we do not live in an ideal world.
Are you aware that Napster completely clogs many universities pipelines?
In our case, we have one (1) 10Mbps link to the Internet for our entire
campus. Before Napster came along, it was pretty much clogged. Then
Napster came, and the competition for the bandwidth became even more severe.
We can try to block access, we can make policies to not have proxy servers
(which we already have, long before Napster), we can make policies to not
allow students to allow others to gain access to network resources through
their machines ( again, we already have, long before Napster), and we can
put bandwidth chokes on connections to limit the absolute amount of traffic
for a port (which then penalizes a student who has a legitimate need to
download a 70M netware service pack she needs to work on her Netware server
that she's using to study for the CNA exam).
The only long-term way around this whole problem is to add bandwidth.
Bandwidth = money. Money = something that legislators will NOT allow us to
spend even if the students proclaim loud and long that they are will to
spend it (and then, often other priorities like books and food win out over
things like bandwidth). Unfortunately, just because students have money or
my budget has money, does not mean the state will allow us to spend it.
So the situation we have right now is a lot of students (307 at my last
Napster port scan, with 2500 students active on the net, and I'm not sure I
got all of the Napster servers, since those ports are pretty elusive due to
the design of the server software) serving up and downloading files using
Napster, often to the tune of 10G (yes, gigabytes) for ONE connection
during a 24-hour period. These folks are using the bandwidth that other
students need to get homework done, emailing parents, downloading other
large files, etc. They are also consuming excess bandwidth that I need as
a "LOCAL network administrator" to get firmware patches for my hubs that
are being slammed by all the traffic, Netware service packs, NT service
packs, etc. Getting a 70M Netware service pack just before Napster got big
here used to take me about 1/2 hour. Now I'm lucky if I can get it if I
start it at the close of work (4:30pm) and hope it's done when I come in at
5:00 the next morning (more than 12 hours!). I usually need to try for
several days, since connections time out, and even Gozilla gets stymied.
My point is that the network is often run by people such as myself that
truly care about providing a good service to students. We need to make the
best decisions we can to allocate bandwidth and choose how large traffic
users are handled. When you start publishing hacks around my attempts to
make the network work better, you are making my decisions for me. Just
because you *can* do something does not mean that you *should" do
something. (and I do mean YOU, david, here, not a generic "you"). I also
know that if you can figure out and publish these types of instructions,
others certainly could (and probably will, if they haven't already). But I
am very big on personal responsibility, and just because one person does
something does *not* give another person the right to do the same thing
with impunity.
I certainly do not want to be a "net-nazi", thought police, or any type of
restrictive controller. Nor do I want to stop music trading or even
pornography. I simply want to provide the best possible service to my
students in a cost-effective, educationally sound and responsible way. In
some cases, that means blocking certain types of traffic that turns out to
be a bandwidth hog.
I spend about 45 minutes every morning (6:30am-7:15am) calling students who
I've tracked as having excessive bandwidth utilization. They almost
universally say "I didn't know I was causing a problem. I'll stop right
now" and that particular problem goes away. Then the next day, someone
else rises to the top of the traffic list. Every time the traffic eases,
someone notices it's faster and then they start downloading... That 45
minutes dedicated to individual students in the morning is time I could
easily use elsewhere. If we do decide to block Napster (we haven't yet)
it'll be because it's an easily identifiable way to efficiently relieve
some of the stress on the network. It will NOT be because I'm trying to
censor students. If I had the time and staff, I'd make the enforcement
individual, aggressively track high-bandwidth users, and not "penalize"
everyone else. But I can't increase my staff without a 2 year request
process, and I really don't want to pass on another $60,000 of yearly cost
to all students to track people down. It's much more cost effective for my
consumers (the students) to block the access.
Since by your actions and postings you've positioned yourself as an expert
on this, I'd welcome any responses you might have to this, or suggestions
you can provide for me to provide good service to my customers in the face
of the challenges from this issue.
Thanks in advance for your responses.
-e-
==============================================================
Ed Melchior, M.S. melchioe@mail.uww.edu
MIS/Technology Coordinator 414-472-2793
http://www.uww.edu/reslife/
====== University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Residence Life =====
