Packet Filter On University Network

sachsmachine explains: "I'm a student at a major university where the network admins are thinking of moving to a packet filtering system, one that would block non-university computers from connecting to machines on the student subnets. There will be a meeting to discuss the proposal on Tuesday, but to be fully prepared going in, I'd like to be sure what impacts the move would have. Some of the things that might be broken (depending on what ports get left open) are pretty clear -- remote logins of various sorts, file sharing, Web sharing, instant messaging, Napster and everything else P2P -- but are there any important/unusual/cool/academically useful applications whose ports we should lobby to protect?" By the nature of university (and corporate) rule making, once a policy is in place, it's much harder to dislodge or amend than it might be beforehand. Steve has listed a fair number of applications which could be tossed out by this; how would you suggest saving university bandwidth without losing them all? How would you convince a skeptical audience that remote access is not all of a piece?

Comments

Make your case with legit reasons

[Patman]

The worst thing you can do in an academic setting
is imply that you are using the network connection for anything other than direct academic uses.
SSH/telnet ports should be easy to keep open. Explain that you're using them for remote access to email or whatever.
Many students put up personal webpages for their job search - resumes, downloadable snipepts of code, etc. Point out that that will be gone.
Pick your battles, though. You may not win on http, but shoot for ftp, or vice versa. Don't throw down over Napster or the like,
becase from an academic standpoint, there is not much use.

Good luck!

Re:Remember FTP!

[raju1kabir]

Sadly, though, my guess is that there aren't too many accademic reasons for putting a server in your dorm room instead of using a university managed server - other than to try to put up a server which doesn't fall under the normal AUP. Sure, it's a fun project and teaches a lot about administration - but it provides little academic gain that setting up a university-wide-only server would not.

I couldn't disagree more. Almost all of the current crop of gifted internet technicians (at least those that I'm aware of) learned their stuff by running servers in their college dorm rooms. Throwing static HTML up on a central web server isn't even the same ball game.

I would furthermore suggest that any university that imposes restrictions such as those mooted in this article is not serious about providing residence hall internet access as an academic resource, and is instead doing it for one of three reasons:

• They think it's "the thing to do"; all the schools are doing it
• It's cheaper than providing sufficient public terminals for web browsing in the library (don't get me started on web "research")
• They see it as a competitive factor in drawing students (like a fancy lobby and nice donuts in the campus information building)

Sure there's abuse. So throw on some rate limiters. What's far more important is the amazing collaborative learning that takes place in this environment; students with no technological ability learning from others how to become content providers and participants in the internet information space just like huge corporations (CNN, Amazon, etc). It's empowering, it's educational, it's a crucial step toward preparing students for the real digital world past the campus gates.

As an undergrad, I attended a university with a strong technological focus and a solid commitment to exposing students to IT (U of Michigan). When I look at my classmates, and compare them to less fortunate students at other schools, the difference is shocking. My fellow alum are totally comfortable with email, with the web, with their computers, with the changes in the world around them. Ten years later I went to grad school at a university with basically no on-campus technology (Yale; though they have finally wired most of the dorms at least). Ten years later, with all this technology supposedly so much more pervasive, and the students at Yale don't have anywhere near the comfort with it. They're intimidated by computers, and just as important, they're BAD at using them.