inkriminator

Hey, I hope this question hasn't been asked before

I got capped by my school for downloading something like 10 gigs over 2 months (shitty, I know) and so they've restricted me to 56k speeds.

I've found that Ourtunes (music sharing prog) are not affected by this cap, presumably b/c I can only download from people on the same network as I. I've tried finding what port that program uses, but no dice.

I've found that they aren't limiting based on hardware recognition, but rather through the wall port, so that if i connect my pc to another port, it works at normal speeds.

Also, I use Firefox, and I notice that sometimes when I'm surfing momentarily it says I'm downloading at higher than I should be able to, at 9kbps for example but this only lasts for a second.

Finally, the one thing that gives me hope is this. When I first downloaded LimeWire (after the cap was instituted) I was downloading files at normal speed, the next day, it was back to the snail pace.

Sorry that this is all a little disjointed, but just trying to throw as many tidbits as I can.
Any Suggestions?
Any possibility that I can get out of this non-broadband hell-hole I've found myself in?

The only thought I've considered, but wouldn't know where to begin involves proxies, just throwin that out there

bendsley

They're limiting you at the switchport, not wallport. To find what ports are open, go to a command prompt and type "netstat -a". You should be able to see what ports are open. If they're limiting that specific switchport, then you're kinda screwed unless you con convince them to throttle the port to a higher speed again.

Maybe you shouldn't have downloaded so much in the first place?

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Dilbert1234567

the more you try to get around the more pissed they will get, you think 56k is bad, wait till they pull the plug, just accept it, say you are sorry and you will restrict your traffic, maybe they will give you the speed back.

techs like baked goods, bring them some.

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inkriminator

When i ran the command, it started listing ports and the results of listening, established, and time_wait. I have to admit, I don't even know what a switchport is. i'd appreciate a little more information about what to do with this.

And yea, I shouldn't have exceeded the limit, but c'mon, 10 gigs, in 2 months?? that seems a little on the low side, and a 6 month reduction to 56k seems a bit excessive for breaking it. I tried convincing them, but no dice, even though one of my friends used to work for that depmt. Apparently the powers that be, have no love...

Pragma

If they had a posted policy about what would happen if you used too much bandwidth, then you're out of luck. Now, I'll admit that's an insanely harsh punishment - I use over 10GB of bandwidth every month (probably every few weeks), and no one blinks - but unfortunately not everywhere has the kind of bandwidth that they can just let that slide.

martinguerre

for the chance you get away with it...there's the chance they ban you forever.

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asshopo

Ya, as someone said above, you are SOL unless you kiss ass and make nice with the admin.

As for being punished over 10gb, I guess I wouldn't last with that connection, I have uploaded and downloaded over 100gb since 3/1/2005 according to dumeter, and thats just my file server (also runs bittorrent client and ftp server). Of course, it's my cable line I am paying for, not a schools "free because you attend" connection.

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Pragma

Generally, schools don't even do the "free because you attend" connection - they tack it into your tuition/room and board as a "tech fee" or something similarly stupid.

One thing you may want to try is "play nice" for a month or two, stay off P2P networks, don't use much bandwidth, etc. - and then petition to get the 6 months reduced due to good behaviour.

arch13

You where capped, the decided to push your luck again by downloading limewire and trying to use it.
You really are asking for it. What your tech fee covers would not come close to paying for the line they have. In that sense, you don't have any implicit "right" to decied how to use your connection. It is there for school use. That means research of academic topics, logging into course websites, and using the connection to register for classes. Anything else they are "allowing" you to do.
When you pay the bill in full, you can decide when and where the bandwidth is used.
So here's the concept. Uninstall all the P2P apps from your computer. Keep the P2P crap off. Forever. No "well maybe the won't notice in a couple months..". Forever.

Realize that you have no right to use those programs over their network. And to make the crude analogy, your tech fee is like pissing in the ocean, so no you aren't paying for the right.
You are installing programs known to contain spyware, you are using identified P2P networks, and are implicitly stating that you are in the right. Bad idea, legally and morally.

I concur, the IT dept would like baked goods.

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inkriminator

I don't think you quite understand what happened, they limited the rate at which I can download, they didn't restrict my ability to download. I am unlikely to exceed their cap while I'm running at 56k.

I'm not quite sure of the distinction you're trying to make here. i have no right in deciding their use, and yet they're "allowing" me to use it for non-academic use, which would mean for academic use, I have the right to them? Again, I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but either way, They do not monitor traffic content. And yes, the amount I pay for what's itemized as tech fees comes nowhere near to the amount the school pays for its internet services, however, when you multiply what I pay by 20,000+ for each of the students who attend here, I think we cover the costs.

Again, I'm not sure what you mean when you say "implicitly stating that you are in the right". I completely acknowledge that my actions were outside the bounds of acceptabe behavior as defined by my IT department. That is cut and dried with no room for argument. I'll bitch and moan about those policies, but the fact that i've broken them is immutable. Bad idea legally, yes, so're a lotta things, bad idea morally? don't get me started.

No doubt they would, you got any recipes you'd like to share?

Lasereth

Damn, that's pretty bastardly of them to limit your connection. I'm glad they don't have that at our University...some of the people I know download waaay more than 10 GB per month.

Sorry, no ideas to get ya outta this one. I'd be bitching and moaning though...that cap is ridiculous. I've downloaded 1 GB of videogame movies on the WoW forums in a single sitting.

-Lasereth

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arch13

The technology that does this is called traffic shaping. The most likely scenario if your schol has over say 10,000 students is that they employ this. What they are doing is assigning your ethernet plug a fixed IP instead of receiving a random IP via DCHP. This fixed IP is given to the traffic shaping (herby TF to save typing) program and told to throttle your total bandwidth.
TF programs can throttle just P2P or AIM traffic for instance, but they have simply applied it to all your ports and told the TF program to assume all packets are throttled.
However, as the program identifies the different network chatter, it shows up that you are attempting to use P2P programs in the log file. A good bet is that they are watching your IP right now, and letting the TF program generate a log file to see if you leavrned a "lesson" or are still trying to download from the P2P networks.
No you will not exceed the cap, but you do dig a deeper hole in their opinion the more you try and use identified P2P programs.


Often the argument is made by students that they have "paid" for their access via the tech fee, and should be able to use it as they see fit. I simply moved to remove that argument from being made, and was not in any way assume you where or are making the argument.
This topic has come up before on quite a few occasions here on the TFP.
The basic premise is this. Computers are swapped by a school every 36 months. Think of the cost of replacing every machine in your school right now. Now add the cost of say 15 servers at $10,000 apeice every 4 years. Now add the cost of 3 T3's (1-library, 1-students, 1-faculty). The result is that the yearly cost exceeds student tech fee's considerably every year. Other funding sources must be used to make ends meet.
The school provides the service at a subsidized rate for academic use. they just let other uses slide. Many school are actually moving towards blocking AIM via traffic shaping becuase of the amount of network chatter it creats. AOL's new Terms of Service has cuased several schools to begine considering this anew. If a school was to ban AIM using technology to enforce a ban, they have the right to do so. Another example of the argument of "But my tech fee paid for it" being incorrect.
Again, no assumtion on my part that your where implicitly making these argument.



The only point was he who has all the guns makes the rules. The school owns the lines, they make the rules.


Depending on your IT department, either chewey chocolate chip cookies or cannibus brownies

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inkriminator

I sincerely doubt that this is true. The IT depmt is fairly rigid, for example, when the lsass virus was floatin around, they demanded that any infected computer be reformatted before it was re-introduced to the network, a good precaution, but also highly unecessary. they are anal enough about the rules that they aren't going to be lenient due to good behavior and someone, "learning their lesson".

Even if I kept limewire, kazaa and plenty of bittorrents running etc etc, so long as i didn't exceed the cap, it wouldn't matter to them. They wouldn't, rather couldn't, give me a greater punishment b/c it's not specified in their terms of usage.


At this point, all of my preliminary research seems to point to no way that i can bypass this bottleneck and fool them into thinking I'm still behind it. However for my own edification I'd like to know what the mechanism is that enables me to download across the network at full speed while having my internet slowed. It seemed like Bendsley was hinting at that with his switchpoint reference, but his explanation didn't suffice, so any info would be appreciated

Rangsk

Think of it this way: All the computers at your university are in a local area network. They can all talk to each other directly without going through any other servers. If you want to connect to anything on the wide area network (the internet), then you have to go through some kind of gateway. It's at that gateway that they're limiting your bandwidth.

I imagine you could get past this by setting up a (secure) proxy server on a friend's computer and routing all your traffic through there - but if you don't stop using p2p programs then you're simply going to get your friend in trouble too.

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kid astronaut

i am surprised at how many people think that he's going to get in trouble if the IT department finds out he's using file sharing.

it's college--- everyone has some sort of p2p program that they use.

it's not even inherently implied that you use it for illegal purposes. my friend and i, at different colleges, have set up a DC++ server just for transfering music files that we create ourselves for a "long distance band." for all of arch13's talk about rights and privileges, i really doubt that college IT people are going to be surprised that there are people on the network using something besides their web browsers.

but maybe i'm wrong?

bendsley

Managed switches can easily limit port bandwidth to whatever they want. The university might be using something like MRTG to monitor individual ports on the switches so that it's easier to tell who is using the most bandwidth. When they start seeing spikes on that port, the obvious thing to do is start throttling that port, regardless of who you are.

I think they might have tried to contact you first and tell you to limit your bandwidth usage on your own accord, but depending on the size of your school it might not be that easy (read that UT has 37,000 students).

The school is having to pay for the bandwidth they use, and depending on their connection to the internet, you might be hogging quite a bit of their bandwidth. When I worked at the college I was attending, I was in charge of all the networks for the dorms. We had a T1 at the time for internet access and a T1 back to TA&M. 1.544 mb can be easily saturated these days.

The school is looking at the bottom line as far as other users on the network and cost. Whoever their internet provider is might give them a certain amount of bandwidth and then charge them more thereafter. I bet your college is also looking from the standpoint that its probably more common to catch viruses and whatnot over p2p. They're just looking out for their best intrests.

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Pragma

The "everyone does it" excuse is never the right one to use. While everyone may sit around on Kazaa/etc. and download files, it appears as though the original poster was using excessive (to his IT staff's mind) amounts of bandwidth and was punished as a result.

I don't think people said "if they find out you're using P2P, you're going to get in trouble" (though it is likely that his university's acceptable use policy has something against it), but rather that it's not helping his case. He won't find any way out of his 6-month bandwidth cap early - or at all - if he continues trying to use P2P networks to download illegal files, continues to use a lot of bandwidth. The campus IT staff are surprisingly well informed - from my experiences - on what goes on in the campus network, despite the students' attempts to hide it - they just choose not to act most of the time.

While they may know everyone's using P2P networks, and are traffic shaping them at the network border, they just don't feel like stepping in personally unless people use lots of bandwidth.

vanblah

At the college that I work at we use Packetteer(sp?) to shape the traffic. It's pretty certain that you won't get around it for a while. Colleges and Universities get a steep discount from Packetteer so your school probably has one. We use it to throttle all known P2P traffic. We don't stop it entirely ... we just don't want to be a honeypot for the rest of the world.

By the way, if you think your IT dept is not watching you, think again. We use MRTG and IPAUDIT as well as the Packetteer to identify the bandwidth hogs. We have been known to call the worst offenders and remove their network accounts entirely. Not to be assholes ... but because it's really not fair to other students who have also paid that pittance of a technology fee. What is yours? Ours is like $75 (75 * 1200 on campus students = 90000).

We have a 45M pipe that is segmented 25 to students 20 to administration. We pay quite a bit just for that pipe ($54000/year), not to mention the server upgrades(about 20,000/year), desktop upgrades (180,000/year), software licenses (100,000/year), maintenence agreements (20,000), and salaries which I'm guessing at about 1 million per year and we're horribly understaffed (I'm the ONLY system admin, the rest are DBAs).

The students constantly complain about the network being slow. Perhaps it's because we have 1200 people who serve every known P2P program available. It has NOTHING to do with the amount of bandwidth we purchase. It has NOTHING to do with servers, switches, or any other infrastructure.

Take your bandwidth cap like an adult. You earned it.

Dilbert1234567

cookies are always nice.

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bendsley

Do you have anything with the WAN accelerators? I'm presuming you're using PacketShaper from Packeteer? How do you like them? Do they seem to work well and do what they say they will?

I installed two Peribit WAN accelerators a few weeks ago on a trial basis and didn't really like them at all. That's why I'm interested. I need them to do VoIP and data shaping from USA to Costa Rica.

At the switchport, do students have 10 or 100mb links? When I was a network admin in college, I set everyone to 10mb links and then throttled individually to specific ports if needed.

Do you block default p2p program ports? I fed everything through SquidProxy before it hit the 2620 router I had.

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"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

vanblah

So far the Packeteer device works as expected. The nice thing is it adapts to whatever P2P software is doing (as long as it has the most recent signatures) REGARDLESS of what port it uses. Of course, we are always one step behind the new P2P stuff. Packeteer is good about updating the signatures regularly.

We gave up on port-based throttling a while back because most of the stuff port roams now anyway.

We are actually thinking about outsourcing the ResNet at this point (it looks like they'll get TimeWarner). Then it's not our problem anymore. Whoopee!

bendsley

We finally outsourced our ResNet bandwidth to Cox Cable. They gave 6mbs to work with, and I don't know what happened after that because I left.

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"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

Fob_Magi

10 GB in 2 months??? HAHAHA...

I do 10-15GB a day muhahaha... I think my hard drive is getting pissy with me tho... I'm scared its gonna crash soon :/

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Such is the Rule of Honor.

robbdn

Why is everyone being so harsh on inkriminator for downloading a ton of stuff? It is my humble opinion that his school's IT dept is being way too controlling of something that should be none of their business. Whatever happened to privacy rights? I know that while my school has blackholed all P2P programs, they also mind their own business about what you do download. I have downloaded over 10gb is one day on my campus network, and they don't say peep, and that's the way it should be. If they have the bandwidth, let people use it.

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vanblah

I've gotten several calls and emails from people detailing the fact that the IT department should "mind its own business and just let students do whatever they want in their dorms." So I think it's great when i get calls from people complaining that the "internet doesn't work" and I get to quote the bandwidth hogs. I can't tell you how many times I've told people that the internet is fine; it's just that there are several hundred students hogging all the bandwidth. We have a 45Mb pipe. Everytime we upgrade it the students just use it all up. They're in their own vlan of course so it doesn't bother the fac/admin side.

I guarantee you the IT dept. doesn't give a rat's ass what you do in your dorm room but they do get tired of the constant calls from people complaining that the network is slow.

Also, there is no privacy on a campus. The campus owns the network ... they let you use it as a privilege.

robbdn

You've got only 25 megabits for 1200 students living on campus? That's insane! If they were all using computers at the same time, that's only 2.5k per student... even at a more realistic only 25% using at the same time that's only 10k. I hope you meant 25MB, that would at least guarantee 80k/sec at 25% usage...

I would be complaining that the network is slow too if I couldn't even break 100k/sec reliably... I'm used to speeds from 5-6MB/sec on campus.

This is really debatable, and one of the most frustrating things about campus IT departments. Just imagine if campus libraries started sticking their noses into how many books you copy, and whether or not you're actually following fair use copyright laws? Just imagine if they suddenly decided they had the right to know what you were reading and restrict your access to it because you "read too much."

I am very aware that most colleges and universities underfund their IT departments, and I think it's a crime, but taking a totalitarian approach isn't going to make IT departments more respected in an academic environment, and may even make some administrators less likely to fund a department with these kinds of policies. It's true, that technically the students haven't got a legal right to privacy on a campus network, but they certainly have an academic right to it as demonstrated by library networks worldwide for centuries. Privacy must be respected, and so must a students right to access the internet to the best of their ability.

I also understand that universities are worried about lawsuits related to copyright infringement and investigations. But really, this only becomes a problem when a student is using campus resources to distribute copyrighted, or otherwise illegal, materials. A university that simply allows students to download whatever they want and respect their privacy never needs to worry about facing a lawsuit directly, it isn't their fault that the student used their resources in the way they did. This is, again, exactly the same as library policies on copying books in the library. Everybody knows you're not supposed to do it, but they provide the facilities and everybody does it anyway. How do they justify it? Well, there is the outside possibility that the library patron is following fair use, and it's really not the library's place to stick their nose into what the student is copying in the first place. Fair use does still apply in the digital world, even with the DMCA, and provides the legal justification for allowing students the facilities to do these things. After all, I can, technically, copy a portion of a video game or a movie, digitally, for use in an academic paper or a presentation in a classroom.

Interesting... 90,000 really isn't a lot to work with. At my university, all students pay the fee, not just on campus students. That might be something worth looking into doing to get extra funding, I don't think students generally mind paying for the kind of service they want. Ours is $100 per quarter, $400 per year, for each and every student, not just on campus, and while the students always find fees to complain about I can never recall a major complaint being made about the technology fees.

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ubertuber

Our campus library does both of these things, and I think it entirely appropriate. They have legal guidelines posted in the photocopy room in the library, and if they catch you breaking them, there will be consequences. And they also limit our "bandwidth" by limiting the number of some kinds of items (CD's) that we can have at a time and by limiting the length of time we can have them. They do this for the same reason IT departments restrict bandwidth - so everyone has access to a limited resource. You could certainly argue about whether the placement of the limit is reasonable, but I doubt you'd get far arguing against the placement of the limit at all, especially using the library analogy.

Not to mention my opinion as a student, which is that I don't appreciate my internet connection crawling along because some asshole who didn't pay anymore than I did is running a P2P program that is hogging the bandwidth. That used to happen here all the time and now they've put a stop to it - it's much better now.

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vanblah

<b>That should have been "45M<i>B</i> pipe." Thanks for pointing that out.</b>

Regarding the privacy issue. I agree that IT should not be sticking their noses into the private lives of students; and we don't unless we have to. The point is that students should not <i>expect</i> that privacy. Furthermore, we don't have to know what you're doing to see that something is wrong. On our campus there's really not much of a valid academic reason for a student to download 10GB per day. Even including students that do massive file transfers with the university. 10GB is not really a lot, but it does stick out like a sore thumb.

It wouldn't make much difference since the entire class body is around 1500. Most students live on campus. We've kicked around the idea of charging the network access fee to all students but the amount we'd get would not make up for all of the complaints. We've even tried justifying it because off campus users still use our network every time they access something on campus.