Re: classifying P2P traffic - what about legit uses?

[David Gillett <gillettdavid () FHDA EDU>]

> From: Randy Marchany [mailto:marchany () CANDI2 CIRT VT EDU]
>
> 3. An observation: I'm a security type and a musician. I've
> always thought that banning P2P traffic because of the
> potential "copyright" problems was like banning the US Postal
> Service (Fedex, UPS) because someone xeroxed a book and use
> them to mail the book. I don't buy the volume issue (it's
> much faster using P2P than USPS....duh!) because that's a
> smoke screen.

  P2P is one of a couple of issues where people complain to us
"it's so much faster!" -- never seeing the impact on the ENTIRE
rest of the campus that buys them that speed.  Our whole campus
Internet pipe is a DS3, nominally 45 Mbps.  How many 100 Mbps
(Ethernet) P2P clients does it take to fill that pipe and block
the Internet for everyone else?

  Yes, there is legit content distributed via BitTorrent.  This
can be read as clients subsidizing the distribution costs of the
content providers.  Our bandwidth is courtesy of the state
taxpayers, who require that it not be used to subsidize commercial
enterprises....  Oops.

  I *do* agree with your premise that legality of content is a
poor criterion on which to decide about whether to allow P2P.  I
disagree, however, with your implication that it is the only
relevant criterion.

David Gillett