FC: More on Kent State rete-limiting P2P users

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Fri Feb 14 2003 - 05:19:40 PST

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "FC: Bush lauds TTIC data-mining plan during speech to FBI today"

    ---
    
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:04:51 -0500
    From: Ryan Townsend <rtownse2at_private>
    Subject: Re: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
    To: declanat_private
    
    They're probably one of the last school campus's to do that.  Just about
    all universities have installed packeteers because of extreme bandwidth
    abuse from p2p clients sometime ago. Most school connections are
    supposed to be for research only, even in the dorms.
    ---
    
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 00:08:36 -0600
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    Subject: Re: FC: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
    From: steveat_private (Steve Wollkind)
    
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    Hash: SHA1
    
    This isn't a new thing.  While I was at Williams College and napster
    was just getting big (probably 4 years ago now) the school limited
    bandwidth consumed by the napster traffic specifically.  They had some
    complex traffic shaping stuff they were using to accomplish this.  In
    my estimation this is probably a pretty common thing at schools around
    the nation...
    
    Steve
    
    - --
    Steve Wollkind        				810 C San Pedro
    steveat_private					College Station, TX 77845
    http://njord.org/~steve				979.575.2948
    - --
    "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"
    					-Tom Waits
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)
    
    iD8DBQE+TIfj0uexoyuzySARAvwsAKDHQUwkKU5t7duB9G0CW5WRm041VwCeOk1n
    Hc/Ils0esN9HDI6ZtyOp9nE=
    =f7ZB
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
    
    ---
    
    From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <ayavuzkat_private>
    To: <declanat_private>
    References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8at_private>
    Subject: Re: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:47:50 -0500
    
    PSU already does this.. but the main problem at PSU is *downstream*
    bandwidth, not upstream, so they limit users to 1.5 gigabytes downloaded per
    week (which is really not very much, on a dorm T1 connection...) - first
    offense, they throttle your connection down to 56.6k equivalent until the
    next Saturday at midnight.  Second offense, same thing, third offense, it's
    56K till the end of the semester.   Unpleasant, yes.  Although I've heard
    recently that there's a new program called NeoModus that lets users download
    from each other over a WAN - ie, the entire PSU network, all over PA -
    without affecting their 'internet' usage - since the bandwidth availability
    inside the internal network is of course much greater than that which has to
    pass through the NAP bottleneck to the outside world... this is all hearsay,
    of course, since I'm not in the dorms at PSU.. (I'm living in my parents'
    basement right now.. *sigh*.. but soon I'll be upgraded to cablemodem, which
    is at least a bit better than dialup...)
    
    -Danny
    
    ---
    
    
    Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 21:47:29 -0800 (PST)
    From: Brandon Dorman
    Subject: Re: FC: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
    To: declanat_private
    In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8at_private>
    
    (if posted, please delete my e-mail address.  Thanks.)
    
    My University, Fresno Pacific University
    (http://www.fresno.edu) blocks p2p altogether.  All
    gnutella clients and most others (kazaa) will not work
    at all.  Their ports are blocked is how I think they
    are getting around it.
    
    -Brandon Dorman
    ---
    
    From: "Dave Phelps" <tippenringat_private>
    To: <declanat_private>
    References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8at_private>
    Subject: Re: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
    Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 23:55:54 -0600
    
    It's not really that big of deal. Big bandwidth gets expensive.
    
    I would imagine it will be configured so that as long as max bandwidth isn't
    reached, traffic will be unrestricted. The prioritization simply sets the
    heavy bandwidth traffic such as P2P at a lower priority. If there is
    contention for the available bandwidth, the higher priority traffic goes
    first. This effectively slows down low priority traffic during peak times,
    while improving performance of higher priority traffic. During non-peak
    times, there will be no difference.
    
    ---
    
    From: "Yoder, Wm. Douglas" <yoderwat_private>
    To: declanat_private
    Message-ID: <3E4C8B16.9060900at_private>
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 00:22:14 -0600
    
    The Milwaukee School of Engineering has been doing this for a year and a 
    half.  The school's bandwidth is paid for, in part, by a State of Wisconsin 
    grant, which allows for internet access for educational purposes.  The 
    school has bandwidth-capped the popular P2P ports, and installed some 
    queing software on some of the main campus routers. Before they did this, 
    it took 5 minutes to check your email, even though the school had almost 
    25Mbps of bandwidth at that time.  Now, things are much better, and the 
    school only needs 18Mbps.
    The Computer Communications and Services Department doesn't make a point of 
    telling the students about this (I had a friend who was a unix admin for 
    the school).  If a student complains, they are told "the Internet access is 
    free for you, but the state is paying for it for educational purposes 
    only.  P2P is not an educational purpose",  and that that is the reason for 
    the bandwidth cap.  If I remember correctly, the bandwidth cap for P2P 
    services is about 5KB/s.
    
    -Doug Yoder
    Milwaukee School of Engineering
    Computer Engineering student
    
    ---
    
    From: "BobCat
    To: <declanat_private>
    References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8at_private>
    Subject: Re: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:24:50 -0500
    
    (remove address please)
    
    : "In attempt to the curb Internet slowdowns and network instability ...
    
    Not news. I've heard a few complaints from students about how long it takes
    to download mp3s via their residence connections. They haven't told me they
    are blocked, though. It just takes a bit longer. They also have great
    trouble buying beer, are we supposed to protest that?
    
    Howzabout they study a bit more, and party and pirate a bit less?
    
    ---
    
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:00:37 -0800 (PST)
    From: Adam Stenseth <lynxat_private>
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    Subject: Re: FC: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P
      users
    
    I'm actually kind of surprised this made politech.   Lots of universities
    do this already; mine, the University of Washington (www.washington.edu),
    implemented a packeteer last summer.  Effects were felt by the students
    last fall, and they reacted:
    
    http://staff.washington.edu/lotzr/kazaa_graffiti
    
    (there was also a response, the 'war_to_protest' chalk)
    
    -adam
    
    ---
    
    Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 07:44:41 -0500 (EST)
    From: Stormwalker <bruenat_private>
    Reply-To: bruenat_private
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    cc: jcarrachat_private
    Subject: Re: FC: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P
      users
    
    
    Hi Declan,
    
      I am not sure if you were just giving this student a break by
      putting his story here, but this is not news. Lots of colleges
      are using various methods (packet shaping is common) to throttle
      student traffic. I know that Merrimack College (where I teach) and
      Babson College (where I used to teach) are doing this.
    
      The public reason is the limited bandwidth, but the target always
      seems to peer2peer, music file sharing, not other bandwidth hogs.
      I would guess the schools are worried about legal threats. In suport
      of this, I have seen access to student disk space shut off when the
      students are known to have software like kazaa on their laptops. This
      is certainly not a bandwidth issue.
    
      Someone may want to look at college IT outsourcing companies (like
      Collegis) to see if they do this at all client sites to see if they
      are a contributor to this trend or whether colleges are adopting this
      approach on their own.
    
                       cheers, bob
    
    
    On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Declan McCullagh wrote:
     >...
     > University officials want to stem bandwidth-sucking programs like
    Morpheus by
     > implementing packeteers, a combination of hardware and software that
     > prioritizes Web activity.
    
    
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
    You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
    To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
    This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
    Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Feb 14 2003 - 05:38:43 PST