[480] in resnet
Re: Keeping traffic internal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tyler)
Sat Dec 1 16:07:43 2001
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0112011238100.25114-100000@hal.rescomp.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 13:05:45 -0800
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu>
From: Tyler <tyler@RESCOMP.BERKELEY.EDU>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <45672E99BBEDD411A4FC00A0C9CFDE1B5856A4@housing.ucr.edu>
On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Hsu, Mike wrote:
>
> Everybody knows exactly what gnutella is used for and it sure ain't for
> sharing non-copyrighted material. Stanford, by putting up this gnutella
> server, is in essence condoning the acts of "unauthorized copying of
> copyrighted materials."
do you allow your residents to use the web? because everyone knows exactly
what the web is used for: the procurement of porn. do you block IRC?
because everyone knows exactly what IRC is used for: warez, divx movies,
and kiddie porn. how can you sleep at night, providing all this
illegal/immoral material?
gnutella is just a tool, much like the web is a tool and IRC is a tool.
> thinking long term solution. Gnutella server = short term time bomb.
> NAT/Trafficshaping = longer term solution. Oh yeah and Education to
> residents != solution. A lot of people have been using packeteer
> successfully, why isn't stanford doing something like that instead of
> putting up a server? They don't even need to buy packeteer. Packeteer does
> what any cisco router can do.
i have a very hard time understanding how someone who works for a
university, an institution which exists because of a belief that education
improves people's lives, can say that education is not a solution.
which is more effective, from the perspective of a student:
1. you can't use that program.
2. p2p apps like the one you're using cause horrible network congestion,
which means people doing academic work can't do their academic work on the
network.
many, many students don't understand the ramifications of bandwidth
hozing, but will rightfully complain that their net is too slow to be
useful. if they know what's going on, they can (theoretically) make better
decisions about how they use the network. if they don't see the bigger
picture, they'll just keep punching holes in your
QoS/rate-limiting/application blocking (which is trivially easy when you
consider port-jumping, proxy servers, and the billions of apps one can use
to get her mp3 fix for the day). education is, in fact, the *only*
solution.
of course, in the real world, you have to supplement education with rules
and limits. people need reinforcement before they'll apply anything they
learn. as such, while i used to be mostly anti-rate limiting, i now
reluctantly except its utility and even necessity in the case of networks
as crowded as most resnets are.
as to the reasons to not get a packeteer (even though all the Cool Kids
have one): single point of network failure and cost spring to mind.
admittedly, cost may not be such a big issue for our well-endowed cousins
in scenic palo alto, but i digress :).
> Also how does a solution such as stanford's affect other resnets when
> students from other universitys hear about it? "Stanford allows and
> condones filesharing, what's up with my resnet capping kazaa and gnutella to
> 5mbit a sec?" I think it brings ResNet as a whole down one notch. Am I
this is an interesting, if strange, point. i'm equally embarrassed to see
other resnets stomping on their users' privacy and blithely censoring vast
sections of the internet. the best i can hope to do is to educate those
resnets (in the form of presentations at resnet symposia or
stridently-worded emails). i don't think any single resnet's actions
reflects on the whole world-wide concept of ResNet, though. this is a bit
like saying, "the US government is waging an unjust war against poor,
starving, innocent civillians; therefore, the notion of Government comes
down one notch." while Government may be inherently evil (i've been
reading the _Illuminatus!_ trilogy), the actions of any single government
doesn't necessarily reflect the whole.
tyler
--
"It's like the High Jedi Council in there."
--rand, on the bike tech crew
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