Napster & other bandwidth hogs
Hello all - I (and I presume many others) have had concerns brought to us about the bandwidth hogging apps & services, like Napster Music Community. As many have discovered, applications such as these can consume a good deal of a broadband connection, as users can serve up files from their own machines, subverting normal firewall configs that can prevent undesired behind-the-firewall serving. Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this. Even having logistical information such as, "close ports x, x, and x" would be of assistance. I'd just like to have some ammunition in case others higher on the food chain ask for this to happen. While there *is* a big concern about copyright (lawsuits and such are in the works against Napster), but being part of an educational community, restricting services based on content is a *huge* can of worms that is dealt with at higher levels than where I function. I mostly need to know the technical end of stuff - Napster's site doesn't list any technical stuff like what ports are used. Thanks a bunch! -Ryan- Ryan Bek Help Desk Manager Office of Information Technology, Greensboro College Phone - (336) 272-7102 x354 FAX - (336) 271-6634
Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this.
pretending we're in business, charging for bandwidth, and crying all the way to the bank. when the customer wants more of your product, and if you find this negative, then your business model needs re-evaluation. randy
Thus spake Randy Bush
Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this.
pretending we're in business, charging for bandwidth, and crying all the way to the bank.
when the customer wants more of your product, and if you find this negative, then your business model needs re-evaluation.
Considering that his email address ended in ".edu" and was asking his question as a representative of such an institution (which you considerably cut out of your response ;), I would say that your statement about his business model needing re-evaluation is a bit uncalled for. I will agree that you, as a business-person, would find the extra use of bandwidth of something like napster nice because you then go on and charge for the bandwidth...being in the business environment myself, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment...but I also understand that the original poster is not working from the same paradigm. :) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this. pretending we're in business, charging for bandwidth, and crying all the way to the bank. when the customer wants more of your product, and if you find this negative, then your business model needs re-evaluation. Considering that his email address ended in ".edu" and was asking his question as a representative of such an institution (which you considerably cut out of your response ;), I would say that your statement about his business model needing re-evaluation is a bit uncalled for.
a - his address was in the header. b - you may want to actually read his message "in either the educational or business community" randy
Thus spake Randy Bush
a - his address was in the header.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you had overlooked his email address (as I did the first time I read his message and *almost* sent off much the same reply you did).
b - you may want to actually read his message "in either the educational or business community"
I did read that...thus my paragraph (which, again, you considerately (hopefully I spelled that right this time) snipped) about you being happy at the greater use of bandwidth resulting in higher charges. That still doesn't explain your excuse about him rethinking his business plan. Hopefully .edu's aren't in the business of "selling bandwidth" per se, but are in the business of educating their students...Napster would get in the way of that and legitimately could/should be blocked by the institution. To the original poster, my apologies for taking this off your original request...I've never checked into a good way to block Napster...the only problems we've had with it here was office folks making use of it...that was more easily handled through administrative means than technical. :) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
O is for Operator Hm... I thought this was NANOG. Presumably even universities have the capability to allocate costs to internal customers. more bits = good less bits = bad Pretty simple. The question that would be correct for this forum, is what techniques do network operators use to measure and scale service for high bandwidth applications. In message <20000124152605.A25299@iglou.com>, Jeff Mcadams writes:
Thus spake Randy Bush
Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this.
pretending we're in business, charging for bandwidth, and crying all the way to the bank.
when the customer wants more of your product, and if you find this negative, then your business model needs re-evaluation.
Considering that his email address ended in ".edu" and was asking his question as a representative of such an institution (which you considerably cut out of your response ;), I would say that your statement about his business model needing re-evaluation is a bit uncalled for.
I will agree that you, as a business-person, would find the extra use of bandwidth of something like napster nice because you then go on and charge for the bandwidth...being in the business environment myself, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment...but I also understand that the original poster is not working from the same paradigm. :) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
--- jerry@fc.net Failure is a natural consequence of any nonscalable activity. -- PV
O is for Operator Hm... I thought this was NANOG. Presumably even universities have the capability to allocate costs to internal customers.
Yes, but that's just shuffling zeros around on paper. Think about it.... Sure, they can charge an internal department for the usage. That cuts that department's available budget for -real-, academic purposes, just so some kid can pirate some media? Makes a lot of sense.
more bits = good less bits = bad Pretty simple.
The question that would be correct for this forum, is what techniques do network operators use to measure and scale service for high bandwidth applications.
Actually, I think what would be most appropriate for this forum is if we were all to shut up now. --msa
I guess there is a misunderstanding between what an educational institution views IT costs as. IT costs (more bandwidth, etc) are 100% overhead. Most have no way of recovering these costs as an increase in revenue. Most corporations, etc could pass this fee on to supported organizations, but from what I understand of Universities, its 100% unrecovered overhead. Hence, no business model. Any bits over 0 are therefore expensive. Regards, Deepak Jain AiNET On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Jeremy Porter wrote:
O is for Operator Hm... I thought this was NANOG. Presumably even universities have the capability to allocate costs to internal customers. more bits = good less bits = bad Pretty simple. The question that would be correct for this forum, is what techniques do network operators use to measure and scale service for high bandwidth applications.
In message <20000124152605.A25299@iglou.com>, Jeff Mcadams writes:
Thus spake Randy Bush
Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this.
pretending we're in business, charging for bandwidth, and crying all the way to the bank.
when the customer wants more of your product, and if you find this negative, then your business model needs re-evaluation.
Considering that his email address ended in ".edu" and was asking his question as a representative of such an institution (which you considerably cut out of your response ;), I would say that your statement about his business model needing re-evaluation is a bit uncalled for.
I will agree that you, as a business-person, would find the extra use of bandwidth of something like napster nice because you then go on and charge for the bandwidth...being in the business environment myself, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment...but I also understand that the original poster is not working from the same paradigm. :) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
--- jerry@fc.net Failure is a natural consequence of any nonscalable activity. -- PV
The data port is set in the user config... however, Napster's servers seem to be within the 208.178.175.128/29 block. There is a Napster FAQ at http://napster.cjb.net/ which could be useful... there's also a protocol specification wandering around, but I can't find it any more. -rt -- Ryan Tucker <rtucker@netacc.net> Unix Systems Administrator NetAccess, Inc. Phone: +1 716 756-5596 3495 Winton Place, Building E, Suite 265, Rochester NY 14623 www.netacc.net On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Ryan Bek wrote:
Hello all -
I (and I presume many others) have had concerns brought to us about the bandwidth hogging apps & services, like Napster Music Community. As many have discovered, applications such as these can consume a good deal of a broadband connection, as users can serve up files from their own machines, subverting
[...]
Since these apps are becoming more and more prevalent, as college students are huge collectors of digital music, and as bandwidth is always a concern, I am wondering what others in either the educational or business community are doing in light of this. Even having logistical information such as, "close ports x, x, and x" would be of assistance. I'd just like to have some ammunition in case others higher on the food chain ask for this to happen.
The decision to block access to napster here was made at a higher level than this writer, so I can't speak to the policies involved. I can however, without further comment, reproduce the access list that seems to have effectively cut them off: deny ip 208.49.228.0 0.0.0.255 any deny ip 208.184.216.0 0.0.0.255 any deny ip 208.49.239.240 0.0.0.15 any deny ip 208.178.175.128 0.0.0.7 any deny ip 208.178.163.56 0.0.0.7 any It's the second line that gets most of the hits. -- Charley Kline, Principal Research Programmer kline@uiuc.edu Data Communications Architect (217) 333-3339 Computing and Communications Services Office University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
participants (8)
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Charley Kline -
Deepak Jain -
Jeff Mcadams -
Jeremy Porter -
Majdi Abbas -
Randy Bush -
Ryan Bek -
Ryan Tucker