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>Like you, we have recently experienced latency and occasional lost >data during these time periods (and also in the hours when the 1200 >UTC gridded data is flowing most rapidly). However, in our case, we >believe our problem is local to UAlbany. We believe that student use >of the internet (most likely via the use of file-sharing apps) is >overwhelming the University's internet gateway. There is an interesting article in the Boston Globe that may or may not be helpful. It is about the file-swap thing. Bob Broedel FSU MET SOURCE : The Boston Globe DATE : October 7, 2002 HEADLINE: GETTING TOUGH AGAINST COLLEGES' FILE-SWAPPERS BYLINE : HIAWATHA BRAY The digital file-swappers of Harvard got a nasty shock last week: a report that the university would soon block peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges of digital music and movies. The report turned out to be untrue - sort of. Nobody has approved an outright ban on file-swapping, but the bosses of Harvard's data networks are giving serious thought to the matter. It costs a lot of money to deliver high-speed Internet access to thousands of students and faculty members, and Harvard was hoping to get a decent return on its investment - a cure for cancer, perhaps, or the discovery of life on Mars. Instead, much of the school's network capacity has been given over to stolen Springsteen albums and illicit copies of "Reservoir Dogs." It all goes to show that the death of Napster, the first great P2P file-swapping system, hasn't done a thing to halt the trade in pirated music and movies. Napster was a soft target, with its central bank of server computers that coordinated the theft of digital files. The music industry had little trouble persuading colleges to block the use of Napster on campus networks; then they drove Napster itself out of business. But the current generation of P2P programs, like Kazaa and Morpheus, don't rely on a central server, with an operator who can be hauled into court. There are millions of Kazaa users, and each is his own server. The recording industry can't sue them all. Then again, they can sue the companies that enable them. The Recording Industry Association of America is trying it right now with the telephone company Verizon, which is a major provider of Internet access. The RIAA has gone to court to force Verizon to reveal the names of customers who may be using their Internet service to swap illicit music files. Verizon says they won't give up their customer's personal information simply on the RIAA's say-so. It's probable that the US Supreme Court will settle this one. The RIAA is also keeping an eye on the nation's colleges, where students armed with high-speed connections gobble up illegal files by the terabyte. But Frank Creighton, the RIAA's antipiracy director, insists that his group isn't trying to bully the schools. "Our main focus is not legal liability against the college," he said. "Our main focus is education." At the Web site www.sound byting.com, you'll find a halfhearted effort to convince larcenous sophomores that stealing music is a bad thing. But making the case to college network administrators is a more promising approach. Under federal law, any Internet provider, including a college, isn't immediately liable if somebody's using their service to deal in illicit data. The copyright holder is supposed to contact the Internet provider and urge them to put a stop to the violation - a process called "notice and takedown." If the ISP takes quick action, it faces no legal penalties. Creighton said that colleges generally respond well to the notice and takedown approach, shutting down the most egregious file-swappers. But this method requires the RIAA to identify specific violations and inform the school. When there are so many violators, the process barely makes a dent in the flow of illegal files. Creighton admits his organization may lose its patience. "Ultimately if the problem doesn't significantly drop," he said, "there's a chance that we may have to get a little more aggressive." In fact, universities are already taking action against the file-swappers, and not simply to mollify copyright holders. P2P activity costs a fortune in wasted Internet bandwidth. Consider the case of Oregon State University, which saw up to 80 percent of its network capacity used up by file-swappers. The school fought back with network management systems that can detect the use of P2P programs like Kazaa. In principle, the adminstrators could just block all such traffic. But that idea doesn't sit well at places devoted to the free flow of information. So they use the system with a little more subtlety. At Oregon State, they use Packeteer Inc.'s PacketShaper to examine each of the billions of packets moving over a network, and spot the ones being sent forth by P2P software. PacketShaper can then limit the amount of network capacity available to these programs. For instance, it can let them use no more than 10 percent of the network from, say, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., but let the file-swappers gorge themselves like vampires after dark. A Packeteer spokesman said about 750 schools worldwide are using the software; perhaps Harvard will soon be among them. Not that this matters to the music companies. They're still being robbed by college students, and it's no comfort that the thefts occur at night. So look for RIAA to get tough. The organization might not get a court order that would force schools to ban student file-swapping. But just trying it could put the fear of death into college administrators, who already resent the file-swappers for wasting so much of their bandwidth. Lawrence Summers, the pugnacious president of Harvard, isn't one to run from a fight. But it's hard to imagine him going to the mattresses for his students' right to swap pirated copies of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@xxxxxxxxx.
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