Behind the Scenes at MIT's Network

BobB writes "MIT's head of computer networks and security gives an inside look at how the techie school is fending off hackers, cranking up its network to handle voice over IP and become a fiber network operator to link to other research institutions. From the article: 'Q - How do you actually enforce security standards among MIT's departments and network users? A - Enforce is not a word you can use at MIT. We try to entice people to do the right thing. We've made a lot of progress. We've removed the financial incentive to run your own network, which used to be cheaper than having us do it. We've been a cost-recovery network since forever now though. At many universities the network is free and they just fund it out of operating costs.'"

Comments

Re:MIT on wireless security

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's becoming standard. Heck, my CITY is going wireless, and this article says the building I work in will be covered by MetroFi in the next 4 months.

Re:Public IPs

[Zackbass]

All computers on that use DHCP need registered MACs, if you've got a static IP there's no need at least as far as my experience has been.

IST does a damn fine job, the stakes on having the network running smoothly are quite high and they get it done, but more importantly is the amount of freedom they allow. We've got the most heterogeneous environment I can think of with hundreds of Course 6ers looking for new ways to bend the network and Course 15s finding new ways to try to break it. There's everything from half broken 486s to Playstation 3s running SVN repositories to completely custom embedded devices sitting all over the network (not that they support these devices) running like a well oiled machine.

Re:MIT on wireless security

[Overzeetop]

Not quite "everywhere", but Virginia Tech has it in most places on campus (~30k students over a pretty big area). It's pretty fast, even in well-populated areas. Interestingly, the hardwired, general access 10bT ports are no faster than the wireless, as I found out one day when I figured I might get a speed boost while d/l a new knoppix image off a (known) very fast server. Still peaked at 3Mb - really no better than my DSL at the office. Go figure.