[68561] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: who offers cheap (personal) 1U colo?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vivien M.)
Sun Mar 14 12:07:29 2004
From: "Vivien M." <vivienm@dyndns.org>
To: "'Andrew Dorsett'" <zerocool@netpath.net>,
"'North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes'" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 12:06:49 -0500
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0403140108470.20746-100000@correo.netpath.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On=20
> Behalf Of Andrew Dorsett
> Sent: March 14, 2004 1:29 AM
> To: North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes
> Subject: Re: who offers cheap (personal) 1U colo?=20
>=20
>=20
> This is a topic I get very soap-boxish about. I have too=20
> many problems with providers who don't understand the college=20
> student market. I can think of one university who requires=20
> students to login through a web portal before giving them a=20
> routable address. This is such a waste of time for both=20
> parties. Sure it makes tracking down the abusers much=20
> easier, but is it worth the time and effort to manage? This=20
> is a very legitimate idea for public portals in common areas,=20
> but not in dorm rooms. In a dorm room situation or an=20
> apartment situation, you again know the physical port the=20
> DHCP request came in on. You then know which room that port=20
> is connected to and you therefore have a general idea of who=20
> the abuser is. So whats the big deal if you turn off the=20
> ports to the room until the users complain and the problem is=20
> resolved?
Actually, you're forgetting what I think is the biggest reason for doing
this: before the user registers via the web-based DHCP thing, they are =
shown
the AUP and have to say they agree to it. If you just leave straight IP
connections available in rooms, and people violate the AUP, they can =
QUITE
credibly argue "But I never read this AUP". The web-based DHCP =
registration
system prevents that.
Other advantages would be
A) It prevents students (or at least, all but the most clueful) from =
taking
multiple IPs and having hubs and such in their rooms
B) It makes it very easy to track what MAC address/IP address is which
person, as you yourself admitted. Sure, this system requires a bit of =
effort
to set up initially (though I think open source implementations are =
easily
available), but afterwards, you don't need to have your most clueful =
network
engineer dig through to try and figure out which room is what IP. If you
lower the clue level required to operate an abuse desk, I would argue =
you
improve its efficiency in many cases...
C) It avoids issues of changing ports. Let's say I'm in room 101, and my
friend Bob is in room 102. I take my laptop to Bob's room and plug it =
into
the network and go and do something dumb... If you hunt down my MAC =
address
to a particular port, it looks like Bob is the AUP violator. If you have =
a
registration system, you know that this MAC address belongs to me, not =
Bob.=20
Oh, and what about wireless networks? I have my nice 802.11b card, how =
do
you propose to track that without MAC registration (or hackish VPN =
systems,
which are also deployed in some campuses)?
[Note: most of the argument above assumes that people are not clueful =
enough
to change their MAC address, of course... And I would argue that most
college students are too busy getting drunk or saturating networks with =
P2P
software to figure this out]
Vivien
--=20
Vivien M.
vivienm@dyndns.org
Assistant System Administrator
Dynamic Network Services, Inc.
http://www.dyndns.org/=20
