FC: More on Kent State rete-limiting P2P users

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:04:51 -0500
From: Ryan Townsend <rtownse2 () utk edu>
Subject: Re: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
To: declan () well com

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.
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Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 00:08:36 -0600
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: FC: Kent State student paper says school will rate-limit P2P users
From: steve () njord org (Steve Wollkind)

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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
steve () njord org                                      College Station, TX 77845
http://njord.org/~steve                         979.575.2948
- --
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"
                                        -Tom Waits
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From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <ayavuzk () fas harvard edu>
To: <declan () well com>
References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8 () mail well com>
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

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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: declan () well com
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8 () mail well com>

(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
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From: "Dave Phelps" <tippenring () tippenring com>
To: <declan () well com>
References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8 () mail well com>
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.

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From: "Yoder, Wm. Douglas" <yoderw () msoe edu>
To: declan () well com
Message-ID: <3E4C8B16.9060900 () msoe edu>
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

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From: "BobCat
To: <declan () well com>
References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030213221001.016568b8 () mail well com>
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?

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Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:00:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Adam Stenseth <lynx () u washington edu>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
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

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Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 07:44:41 -0500 (EST)
From: Stormwalker <bruen () host49 duncable cust sover net>
Reply-To: bruen () coldrain net
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
cc: jcarrach () kent edu
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.




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