Re: Killing Napster

["Kevin T. Shivers" <kts () wam umd edu>]

At 01:39 PM 2/16/00 -0500, Andrew Scoggins wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am currently looking into killing the MP3 Program Napster. 
>
> A user told me that he had been using it inside the firewall to download
> files on an external Napster server. He assumed he was safe because he
> was behind the firewall, but soon discovered that other users were
> downloading from his machine. My guess is that Napster establishes a
> connection from client to server that is used for uploads AND downloads.
> So, the burning question is, has anyone blocked Napster by specifying
> the destination port (which I haven't figured out yet) going out? I am
> not running an application level firewall, so I can only do it by port.
>
> Thanks for any help. I also post other info as I find it.
>
> Andy

Alot of universities have been blocking out Napster since it sucks up a ton
of their bandwidth [at Bucknell it was so bad, it was taking up to 40% of
their network traffic!]  The port Napster uses is 6699 I believe, at least
that's what I remember seeing when I last used the program.  Quite a useful
program on campus. :)  If you dig around someone reversed engineered the
protocol and published it.  I think it does use the connection for
everything, which is why people were uploading files off of his machine.
I'm sure slashdot has some info on this since there were a few threads
about schools banning programs like Napster.

kts