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:Public IPs

[petabyte]

In my time there, they did not, however, actively monitor systems for viruses and malware. I often received spam from student PCs attempting to spread viruses via attachments. Many lab systems suffered from various malware, although that improved in my last year after they switched to a pseudo-thin client setup.

In my time there (I was only on campus in 2000), they did regularly scan the machines on the network for exploits and they would disconnect you for SubSeven or Nimbda or the like. I never had any problems in the lab and indeed I was impressed that for my last semester at school, they actually had two linux machines in the labs you could use. They weren't exactly configured properly but when you logged on and realized that these were Xenons with SCSI hard disks ... well someone in ASET likes Linux :).

My only complaint in the dorms was the massive amount of IPX traffic smashing into my firewall. Living in an all guy's dorm with Counterstrike blasting away as far as the ear could hear ...