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Bandwidth Demand at American Universities
Robert Rwebangira writes: "There is an article in The New York Times (free reg required), discussing college students 'insatiable demand for bandwidth.' Of particular interest is the continuing prominence of file-sharing (inspite of the demise of Napster) and the amount of bandwidth consumed in even 'legitimate' activities. It seems students demand for bandwidth just keeps growing."
Without specific proof, I'd be very willing to say that it's not just students. As the internet grows, and we get faster computers, and more visually intense websites, its only obvious that bandwidth demands for EVERYONE is going to grow. The size of applications and games has also risen, and even downloading legal demos and share/freeware games is bandwidth intensive, this is not even to mention 'warez' and the fact that nobody seems to be happy with porn 'pics' anymore, they want vids. So, as download sizes grow, its only obvious that bandwidth demands will also grow.
Don't Tread on Me
... is that people get used to high bandwidth as customers. Even though they may technically be customers who are supposed to be buying an 'education,' the fact is that (typical, 4-year, residential) colleges / universities seem to provide professors and classrooms only to supplement their provision of high-speed, on-site-service, always-on, relatively unrestricted network access. This is one reason I regret not living in the dorms at Univ. of Texas, which it turns out grew some good-at-the-time ethernet ports while I was in school, and I bet are still good.
... I'd pay $300/mo for the always-on mediumband available in rural Montana etc), I want there to be an increasing supply of college grads used to insane, insanely cheap bandwidth to help drive the market :)
As someone who wants to be a customer for better internet access of all sorts (true all-continent roaming access for N. America at least would good
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The problem is unlimited, flat rate access. The solution is a market based approach where people are charged according to how much bandwidth they use, and not draconian anti-market restrictions on utilization.
Want to use more bandwidth? Sure, as long as you're willing to pay for it.
There's no way to stop filesharing except at the endpoints of communication. Unless the users stop wanting to use filesharing, there will always be workarounds for all the filtering and blocking you can think of. The next step is encrypted connections below tcp level, aka ad hoc virtual private networks. Since there's a heap of good reasons why one would want all traffic (even the "non-shady") encrypted anyway, universities will most likely refrain from blocking the necessary protocols. Once the traffic becomes opaque to the transport, there goes the ability to filter based on contents or protocols.
What can be done is this: Restrict bandwith or volume of data. That however will limit certain promising aspects of network development like freenet and other decentralized protocols. That's why especially universities which are supposed to be interested in innovation should think twice before crippling network access.
Dude, thats harsh, 1.5GB a week is absolutly nothing if yoou really think abut it. Thats an average of 2KB/s constant use, which you could easily pull if you ever just play internet games freqently and surf the web. Or just download 3 iso in 1 week.
But seriously what stupid network engineers put the keymcard syste on the same network? Talk about securuesity iss.
Segment the 2 networks. Install a 200MB/s cap so they can't pull faster than that. And if penalties are needed, put them at 10GB a week at least.
Here are just a few router stat graphics from my university. As you can see, Kazaa/Morpheus is 85% of the outbound traffic!! Inbound isn't quite as bad, only 63% or so.
The problem is not that students are sharing files. The problem is that students are sharing files outside the campus network. There's almost always extra bandwidth within the dorms. If a school were to encourage some method of sharing that first tried to download from within the campus, the vast majority of desired files would be found within the dorms, and the external bandwidth usage would diminish. Of course, such a pragmatic approach would make the stop-it-all crowd very unhappy, so it is unlikely to ever be implemented.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
OK, first off, I'm very serious. And I'm ignoring such things as Morpheus, Gnutella, etc. Those should be blocked.
But honestly, is it so unreasonable for bandwidth demand to go up? The medium is getting richer. Websites are taking advantage of media like Flash, movies, and sound more and more. More information abounds. People want stuff in more than just plain marked-up text. Maybe the increase is disproportional, but there are people (like my parents) that still believe that a 28.8kbps modem is sufficient. Not true.
Yes, as new services (including gnutella and napster) come about, there is a natural demand for more access. Deal with it.
More, quicker, better. It's the way things will go.
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
The point isn't to stop it, but to treat it like a second class citizen. So if there is no shortage of bandwidth you can do all the filesharing you want, if the "legit" traffic uses 75% of the available bandwidth then there is 25% left for filesharing. The only blocking would happen if the "ligit" traffic manages to use all the bandwidth.
From a technology point this is a pretty easy thing to do, the first paper I read about it was in, um, '94 I think, and was oddly enough about a UK to USA pipe that was jointly owned by a research university and a business, they carved it up to 1/3rd of the traffic to the business, 1/3rd for faculty, and 1/3rd for other uni uses (students mostly). Any of the 1/3rd were unused the other two could split the slack.
This scheme is much better then outright blocking for a lot of reasons. First is fairness, it is fair to let the filesharing go on when there is spare bandwidth. Second is practical use, if you block a port people will quickly use another port, if a port is "just slow" it will take way longer for anyone to realize they should try to work around it. In fact as long as the reasoning is explained many people won't even try to work around it.
Depends on the limit. In this case "whatever is left over" seems pretty reasonable. It would work out to far more "network time" then most astronomers get "telescope time", right?
didn't understand that leaving Kazaa, Morpheus and all their other file trading utilities on all day long was not only illegal,
Hello! Why would leaving Kazaa running all day be illegal?!
I think you're making some interesting conclusions about legal precidents which have yet to be set. Now, I could buy that explicitly downloading something which is copyrighted is a violation of copyright (assuming that no other provision, e.g. licensing, has been made), but you're way out on a limb otherwise.
I've said this before, but its a good point. Even though its been pointed out to me that some of the file sharing software supports this, people don't primiarly share locally. They abuse the upstream connection for all of their sharing, when chances are good on a large university campus, there will be numerous others sharing similiar things, and the local bandwidth is cheap and plentiful.
The clients used for this purpose need to prioritize on local networks. Even if there is a limit on the number and speed of the connections, give immediate unrestricted access to anyone thats on the local net. This will encourage people to look first from within and only search the rest of the internet if it can't be found locally. If other large universities did the same thing, then the incoming requests would also be significantly minimized.
Remember, if the upstream connection is used or a local one is used, the local bandwidth is spent anyways. Might as well quit wasting one of them.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
as i see it, the problem lies in students' view of computers as music storage devices rather than tools to do classwork. napster/audiogalaxy/kazaa/whatever is now seen as the primary use for a computer in a dorm room, and the students with those computers, being the unwashed masses of the internet, will often leave the default settings on, sharing all the files they download. large numbers of people doing that will slow down any internet connection.
but that's not it. because this is how the students see their computers to be used, they expect that the campus resources for internet access should be adjusted for their obviously non-academic activity. this sense of entitlement is at the root of the problem. without all the people who only know their pc as a souped-up jukebox, there would be plenty of bandwidth for legitimate use.
that may sound pretty out there -- i'm just speaking as someone who's seen the cycle of network saturation leading to a blocked ip or rate limited port too many times.
I don't like Acceptable Usage Policies. I see them and think "these guys haven't built their network properly". I want their network to let me do whatever the hell i want, and restrict me automatically through technical means, not allow me to overload everything, THEN tell me I've been bad.
I'd like to see bandwidth restriction based on current overall usage too, rather than times of the day, ports, or locations around campus. If no-one is using the 10Mbit link, I should be able to use it! When things get busy, my pr0n downloads should be throttled back.
The majority of students even in a small school can not be organized to stop running this type [morhpeus, et al] of software. They just bitch about the slow connection and keep right on downloading mp3's.
There are a reason most college kicks complain about bandwidth while running the same bandwidth sucking program: that's what they want to do. Surfing the web at top speed is nice, but most college students really just want to download music. So it doesn't really make sense for them to stop doing it in order to free up the bandwidth. Telling college kids to stop downloading music in order to free up bandwidth is like telling a computer gamer to stop playing games in orer to free up CPU cycles. What good are the freee resources if you're not using them for what you want to do?
In the end, college kids mostly just want to download music. I know, because I am one. So no matter how well intentioned, any kind of packet filtering scheme is just making the college kids madder.
Stupid like a fox!
I believe that some places are doing blocking, and I think the blocking is a bad idea for very much the reasons you state.
My proposal is different from blocking the ports. I merely want to give preference to other traffic. Assume for the moment that a university has a T3 (I know, that's not much bandwidth anymore, but I happen to know the numbers for that). So there is about 45Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Now assume that you and one other guy are using the net, he is streaming some data from a telescope and has a demand of 22Mbits/sec. You are grabbing a NetBSD ISO from a P2P network and also want 22Mbits/sec. Without traffic shaping you would both get right about 22Mbit/sec for a total of 44Mbit/sec. With my proposed traffic shaping you also both get 22Mbit/sec since there is 45Mbit/sec available. Now lets say I show up and want to use 22Mbits/sec to download CivIII. In the ideal world I'll get 1Mbit/sec and the two of you will both stay at 22Mbit/sec (unless I am really going to use CivIII in some educational manner). As I proposed it you and I get 11.5Mbit/sec and the telescope guy sticks at 22Mbits/sec.
Not blocked, but there is an implicit assumption that the file sharing traffic is less important the the other traffic, one that isn't totally fair, but it probably as good as it gets.
That clearly isn't my intent, just to make sure the other traffic gets first crack at the bandwidth.
Hmmm, now who has:
I know, cheap blow.
That doesn't seem too bad either. I have nothing against that solution. In fact it can co-exist with the traffic shaping. You can give some amount of shaped bandwidth for "free" with normal dorm fees, and allow people to buy more non-shaped bandwidth at market rates (which may include fees above what you quoted for equipment and other things).
I don't know how many people would be happy with it and how many would not view it as an escape from being hemmed in, but another excuse to nickel and dime them to death, but that's what pilot studies are for :-)
Like many here on Slashdot, I came from college away with a need for high speed bandwidth. Not only am I not alone, the ranks are growing. Each year, students with a need for speed leave looking for residences that offer these conveniences. Where a small number of individuals in their mid-30's consider bandwidth a necessity many of us in our early to mid 20's consider it a requirement of our living spaces. In my own case, high speed access was a requirement when looking for an apartment, (wireless 100KB both up and down, nice). Complexes outside of college towns are beginning to take notice as they begin to string CAT 5 through their buildings. In addition, many home builders are getting into the act with prewiring the homes with CAT 5 where traditionally they would drop CAT 2 and 3 for phones. While the bandwidth market won't take off tomorrow like so many had hoped "AT&T wireless, CLECs, etc." Give it 10 years when individuals like myself are ready to buy homes, THEN we will see the broadband revolution we were promised over the past few years.
HT
A good portion of the posts by students are their tales of woe about not being able to share gigs of porn and MP3s. Big fucking deal. The fees for your semester's worth of internet access isn't higher than what I pay in the same period for a cable modem. Stop being whiny bitches. I think legitimate uses also fall short of downloading a new Linux ISO every day. No matter what you think you need, you don't REALLY need a new Linux ISO every day. There's also a good chance your school's got a mirror on their internal network somewhere of all the ISOs you could want. If you need an update use apt-get or some other installer program with FTP support for fetching new RPMs. You might talk to some network admins to see if they would provide a mirror for said FTP so you wouldn't have to go outside the network to keep your system up to date. Browsing the web and playing counter strike or Quake all day long is easily legitimate because it isn't going to put you over any quotas. As for admins, put mirrors of stuff like Linux ISOs and FTPs on boxes in the internal network and advertise them to students so they know they don't have to tax your internet connection to get them. Also set up HTTP caching proxies at the head end the dorms or library or whatever hooks up to. It will offload stress on your outgoing connection to the net by a good deal.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.