Halo 3 Causing Network Issues

Recently at my university where I'm a student and a sys admin, we have been experiencing some odd outages, in particular since the 25th of September. The outages seemed to occur between 8 PM and 12:00 AM — peak gaming hours for our dorms. It just happens that Halo 3 came out on the 25th of September. Upon further investigation we found that our network routers were shaping TCP packets, but not UDP. Once we applied UDP shaping as well, all network outages ceased. Gamers complained, but university students attempting to access network resources such as our UNIX clusters were satisfied.

Comments

Doubts

[nielsslein]

I'd like to see more proof before I go and blame Halo 3 for this.

Re:Doubts

[0100010001010011]

Indeed, just like the iPhone 'broke' some networks. I bet it's something else's fault and Halo 3 just highlighted the issue.

Re:Doubts

[CrankyFool]

Dude, you didn't even have to read the FA, it was in the summary! The issue was that the routers weren't shaping UDP.

Re:Doubts

[SatanicPuppy]

Oh, it's probably to "blame" in the sense that it's new, popular, and network intensive. I don't see any indication that it's doing anything WRONG, however.

Hard to say anything without knowing what was done, preferably from someone who isn't a student tech. It sounds like they saturated his bandwidth and he throttled 'em, which is pretty draconian. Sometimes, that's the only solution, especially if your university isn't all that tech savvy.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not try to read the fucking article. That is impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there is no fucking article.

Re:Doubts

[MindStalker]

No in large university networks you have to set bandwidth caps for all users, (pst your ISP does this now and sets it at whatever Mbps you buy). His router wasn't even looking at UDP traffic so a few users were getting more than they were assigned.

Re:Doubts

[KiloByte]

Yeah, I can see three explanations:

• Halo 3's network protocol is so abysmal that it needs a big chunk of bandwidth. I'm not talking that everything must be done The Right Way (ie, sending just what other players pressed and a checksum of the game's state like Doom1/2 did), but even sending the coords for objects you can see won't take more than a few KBs per second.
• the routers were buggy and crapped out after seeing more than X streams, counting every UDP packet as a separate stream (a moderately popular bug). As shaping fixed the issue, I doubt this could be the culprit.
• the whole univ having nothing but a slow DSL uplink or so. I don't know where the article's poster is from, but if that's a 3rd world country it's possible.

Somehow, not knowing anything about Halo, I suspect a combination of the first and third reason.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Sixteen players in a big outdoors map, where they can see a lot of stuff? That's not an insignificant number of KBs per second. And if your college is like mine was--where some nights, literally 75% of the player population was Haloing--that can easily hit a few MB per second.

Okay, on second thought, that's not all that huge a number. But doesn't UDP have more overhead than TCP? Eh, I guess I don't know that much about this after all.

Re:Doubts

[X0563511]

The solution? PLAY A LAN GAME.

No need to use the internet if you are all inside the network.

Don't know if Halo 3 has that as an option however... if not, fucking stupid...

Re:Doubts

[arivanov]

Missed one - the routers crapped out on packets per second, not on bandwidth. This is probably the most likely one.

As far as the network protocols being abissmall you are about right. They have devolved over time.

Once past the stage of serial connections, the early gaming protocols efforts tried to use multicast+unicast or broadcast+unicast technologies to run peer-to-peers like networks where people truly played against each other.

These times are gone. It is all client-server now.

This explains the admin problem - I bet that most of the students were fragging each other silly together and played within the same map and the same game. That all ended up as a lot of client-server connections. This does not consume a lot of bandwidth on average, but it is capable of flatlining the network for short periods of time every time something interesting happened in the game because the data is tromboned back and forth across the same bottleneck many times. 1 student moves and the server sends the data to 16 others, and so on. Essentially this is a form of amplification/positive feedback loop. If the same students were playing games with other people located elsewhere the effect would not have occurred.

This is a classic example of devolving and microsoftization of the gaming protocols. If the game was running locally using broadcast+ unicast or multicast_unicast to inform all local participants and only one dedicated hypernode checked what is going on outside the small "local world" there would have been no bandwidth/pps problem.

Re:Doubts

[KiloByte]

Sixteen players in a big outdoors map, where they can see a lot of stuff? That's not an insignificant number of KBs per second. And if your college is like mine was--where some nights, literally 75% of the player population was Haloing--that can easily hit a few MB per second. Well, trees, doors, walls, signs, etc tend to not move a lot. So usually all you need to send are the players themselves, bullets, and that's about it.

Okay, on second thought, that's not all that huge a number. But doesn't UDP have more overhead than TCP? Eh, I guess I don't know that much about this after all. Actually, UDP has slightly less overhead: 20 bytes+layer 3 header for TCP (=32 bytes + Ethernet frame over IPv4), and 8 bytes+layer3 = 20 bytes+Ethernet over IPv4 for UDP. Yet, with TCP, the OS forces as least some congestion control, something that game programmers typically completely disregard.

Re:Doubts

[KiloByte]

Beh. Ten years ago, when me and a bunch of friends used to write simple games as high school kids, we never got worse than some kind of a minimal spanning tree, doubly-connected w/o bridges if the game in question allowed dropping nodes. This is basic graph theory, something any CS student has to know.

And highly paid professionals should be a lot better educated than a group of kids, right? Oh well, whom am I kidding. But if you're writing a gaming library for millions of dollars, the library ought to handle at least the most common case when most players are close to each other well.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods on crack...

If you have that many players "haloing" then start a friggin lan game! better speed for all!

Re:Doubts

[hedwards]

The college I went to began to throttle bandwidth on file sharing programs between my junior and senior years. It made a real difference in terms of the ability to use the campus net connection. One could still share files by using the regular windows file share, but p2p was throttled down to .2kbps.

It surprises me that game playing alone was causing the network problems. I would expect that it was something else which was happening during the time when most college students are online. I haven't used the new xboxes at all, but don't they allow people to download large demos? If that is the case, that is a much more likely reason than halo. People may have recently purchased a new xbox because of the new game, but it probably wasn't the game itself that was the cause of the bandwidth problem.

Ultimately, there is typically only one connection to the net that is provided by the school, and if it is all being used up fine, but it should at least be something that is academically related or general net use.

Re:Doubts

[garbletext]

Yet, with TCP, the OS forces as least some congestion control, something that game programmers typically completely disregard. TCP has a lot more than congestion control and packet size that makes it a poor choice for games. It's overhead includes acknowledgements, error correction, and things like guaranteed packet order and retransmission of lost packets. For a game, especially a FPS, you want to fully utilize available bandwidth. If a packet has to get retransmitted, or held because it's not in order, it's going to be stale by the time it arrives, so you might as well ignore it. UDP's connectionless nature means that clients can just spew packets as fast as their link allows.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish this could be modded over +5. Funniest comment I have read in at least a month.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

stupid html... that should be

Yet, with TCP, the OS forces as least some congestion control, something that game programmers typically completely disregard.

TCP has a lot more than congestion control and packet size that makes it a poor choice for games. It's overhead includes acknowledgements, error correction, and things like guaranteed packet order and retransmission of lost packets. For a game, especially a FPS, you want to fully utilize available bandwidth. If a packet has to get retransmitted, or held because it's not in order, it's going to be stale by the time it arrives, so you might as well ignore it. UDP's connectionless nature means that clients can just spew packets as fast as their link allows.

Re:Doubts

[KiloByte]

UDP's connectionless nature means that clients can just spew packets as fast as their link allows. Or, in other words, they spew packets with total disregard to other users, jamming up the network.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

If either of you thought about this instead of just acting superior, you'd realize that they tried the "p2p" method until cheating became widespread, and then had to shift to a more complicated (but less efficient) server model that could run checks on the data and make sure nobody was cheating.

Highly paid professionals know more than you, don't worry.

Re:Doubts

[quintesse]

Ehm no, there is no difference between 16 students playing together or each playing against 15 different people somewhere else. Exactly because this is client-server. Your story would be correct if this was still p2p like the old Command and Conquer games where each client had to tell each other client what it was doing. And I'm hardly a MS fan, but to say this is because of "microsoftization of the gaming protocols" is just silly, gaming protocols have been done this way for years now, long before MS was even thinking of entering the gaming market.

Re:Doubts

[maraist]

It wouldn't be the downloading of the game, as that's TCP not UDP, and it very likely isn't connectivity to the internet, because that would have nothing to do with access to the central UNIX servers - Local networks are always faster than internet connections, thus, unless the summary of the article was lying, it was purely a HUB/Switch UDP network hog, and any good sys-admin of a massive local network would have done the same thing.

Consider a percentage of 10,000 hosts playing the game.. All sending multi-cast UDP packets. You have say 1,000 hosts sending several packets per second to every network that multicast is configured to broadcast to. So you have several thousand packets per second going to at least every network card in the dorms, and probably to/from all the student-accessible computer labs to boot.

While the central servers most likely were on isolated (non-broadcastable) networks, all the client-host accessible points were choked.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like they saturated his bandwidth and he throttled 'em, which is pretty draconian. Sometimes, that's the only solution, especially if your university isn't all that tech savvy.

Fucking dumbass

Re:Doubts

[notrandom]

slashdot does not escape the microsoft propaganda machine...bleah .. sellouts! :)

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

For a game, especially a FPS, you want to fully utilize available bandwidth.

I don't know of any FPS programers who would want to fully utilize available bandwidth. If they did, it wouldn't scale and their game would suck.

What they do want to do, is minimize latency to keep character movement smooth and accurate to give the perception of real-time immersion and do that with a minimum of bandwidth usage, so that their game will scale to a practical number of players. Minimizing bandwidth usage helps improve latency and scaling.

Re:Doubts

[OoZz]

I seriously just got done laughing for about the past 5 minutes ... so wish we could mod this more than +5 lol

Re:Doubts

[gallwapa]

uh, multicast isn't broadcast

Re:Doubts

[xQx]

Yeah, this is news?

Sounds like the university needs to stop relying on reactive shaping to identify traffic and buy more bandwidth.

Next they'll be bitching that people should stop masking bittorrent traffic to make it look like SIP which they prioritise up.

Just remember: There's no such thing as a stupid question... only stupid people.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

There are articles but after a while you realize they are all the same, 404.

Re:Doubts

[AHuxley]

The same highly paid professionals who thought the herd could not count to 640.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

'cmon, boil down. Have a look on how the "professionals" describe their network requirements to play their Halo 3: "Xbox Live itself requires a broadband connection of some kind."

here's the rest of the crap:
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=h3networking

so, basically it was nothing more than an ethical move to shape down that traffic...

Re:Doubts

[j450n]

Obviously simple games written ten years ago have a lot of relevance to complex modern multi-player games...

The client/server model offers a lot of benefits, the most notable of which are having an authoritative source that can mitigate cheating and the ability for a single client to fall behind without ruining everyone else's experience.

Re:Doubts

[Original Replica]

I blame the co-eds for not providing something far more interesting for kids in the dorms to do between 8pm and midnight. And I'll blame that University (and others like them when the ISPs point to them to strengthen the case against net neutrality. If the coursework is that time consuming (frequently it is) can't the late night studiers go to the library or computer lab like I did when I was in school?

Re:Doubts

[ImTheDarkcyde]

In relation to number 1, I would like to stand out in Halos defence that it's some of the best netcode I've seen in a game for a long time. I've seen maybe 1 or 2 players jumping around lagging, but as for the amount of data it's sending, no idea.

Re:Doubts

[daBass]

Sounds to me like the issue was that they either do not have enough bandwidth, or the routers could not handle the load.

They used shaping to make the experience of non-gamers better, at the expense of throttling the gamers' traffic and making their experience worse.

One can argue about which is better use of the uni's resources, but you can never claim the issues were caused by "not shaping UDP", there is no requirement to shape anything to make your network work.

Re:Doubts

[Pc_Madness]

Yeah, you really don't. The amount of bandwidth goes up with the amount of players in a server. The server reports the position of a player, and any actions it might be performing... for example a grenade has been thrown from here with this trajectory. It will also report any kind of moveable objects. Map size doesn't come into it, since its only sending out information on the people and their locations, not every square inch of the map. As for TCP vs UDP. UDP is connectionless, so it has no overhead, while TCP does. Games rely on UDP, as is my understanding, but still use TCP for a few things. As for how much bandwidth a 16 player game of Halo uses.. I would think it would be about 10-15kB/s. CS is usually higher than that, about 15kB while a game of Gears of War is alot lower.. perhaps 5-10kB, but generally most 360 games are pretty good bandwidth wise. (I'm trying to judge speed based on my download usage, so these numbers aren't exactly accurate. :p)

Re:Doubts

[Blakey Rat]

Ok,

1) Saying that you know more about game networking than the crew at Bungie, the crew who have been making games with LAN and Internet play since freakin' Minotaur in 1992, that's just plain stupid. Let's see your credentials if Bungie's coders are so stupid.

Client-server is used because it's the only way to provide fair "hit negotiation" (the server always decides who hits who-- play Mechwarrior III for an example of a game without this) and it prevents cheating, since each client sees only what it absolutely needs to see to function.

2) Never use the word "Microsoftization" again.

Re:Doubts

[__aaclcg7560]

Sometimes the dorm room internet connection is a lot faster. I been in a few libraries where everyone has a laptop with a network cable plugged into the wall or on wireless, and the library network was too slow. The days of students sitting in library with a dozen books on the table is long gone.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Highly paid professionals know more than you, don't worry.

I wish that was true in more instances. Sonic Team is pretty bad with this. You can still hack money on your character client side in PSU. Yeah, they thought Game Guard was going to stop that one. Either they haven't learned anything from their past online games or they're being incredibly cheap with the bandwidth.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

>Oh, it's probably to "blame" in the sense that it's new, popular, and network intensive.

No, more than likely, it's an attempt by kdawson to generate revenue for Slashdot, and it appears to be working.

See, Slashdot isn't really "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" anymore: It's more like "Keep the idea of the latter alive, for all the wannabes, so they can generate revenue, while thinking that they are real nerds".

And, in general, it works: All of the wannabes gather around articles such as this, and piss and moan about this, that or the other (all generally off-topic and pretty much less than coherent)... Slashdot gets its income, and the clueless get a forum in which to spout - it works out nicely for all involved, I suppose.

That, of course, is ALSO why posts by NewYorkCountyLawyer are so prominent: They are guaranteed to generate revenue.

Ignore for a moment the fact that he's a lawyer, and, as an officer of the court, he cannot tacitly support copyright infringement. He's representing people that have been unjustly sued by the RIAA - and THAT, in the eyes of the clueless, makes him their hero: 'cause if he's doing that, and he's a real, honest to God lawyer... then he MUST also support copyright infringement, right?

WRONG. Sorry - he doesn't think that any of you have a right to be entertained via illegal downloads.

And, if anyone actually had the balls to confront him (which nobody here DOES, because they're enjoying the fantasy): He'd say the same: He doesn't support copyright infringement, even against RIAA member companies - he CANNOT, you see... all HE is doing, is litigating against their illegal attempts to stop such, when the people so charged haven't done that (and, that IS a good thing).

In short, he's not a fan of piracy, either... only, he's NOT going to tell you that, so long as all of you keep helping him for free with his cases: You're providing him with technical assistance that he would otherwise have to pay for, for free, in the misguided belief that he supports piracy - he doesn't.

In fact, his nickname here on Slashdot is pretty much misleading: "NewYorkCountryLawyer"... kinda hearkens back to the "good old days", you know? It reminds one of the whole "Daniel Webster/New England Country Lawyer thing"... which, of course, has its own implications, with "The Devil and Daniel Webster", yes?

And the cynic in me says that that's by design, too.

He practices law, in Manhattan - all you have to do is look it up. That's just about as far from the "country" as one can get.

Only, nobody here wants to know these things, while he's taking on the RIAA... that makes him a "good guy", right?

Sorry, it doesn't. It makes him exactly what he is (and, to his credit, he's never said otherwise): He's a lawyer, taking on the RIAA for the things that they are doing illegally. THAT has nothing to do with copyright in any fundamental sense.

And if you actually PUSH him - he will be forced to admit the same.

Sorry, but, it's true.

Re:Doubts

[thealsir]

My high school had one dual ISDN link connecting about ~300 computers until my senior year...it would literally take 5-15 minutes to load mostly text web pages. The dumbasses in charge didn't get the message till I was almost out of school.

Shitty school internet is not a third world phenomenon at all.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

"Somehow, not knowing anything about Halo, I suspect a combination of the first and third reason"
Somehow, I suspect you're an idiot.
But, OMG, don't you talk nice?!?
Hell, if one didn't know better, they'd think you knew something, and mod you up.
Oh, wait, they did.

Re:Doubts

[CyberNigma]

In most instances it still holds true. Remember, just a few people are smart and dedicated enough to find and exploit those vulnerabilities. Everyone else just reaps from their labor. I think those are the people he's saying they are smarter than.

Re:Doubts

[Mr. Freeman]

"Ultimately, there is typically only one connection to the net that is provided by the school, and if it is all being used up fine, but it should at least be something that is academically related or general net use."

Yeah, how dare college students try to use the network for gaming.

Seriously though, this is something that A LOT of people miss. College students are living at the college 24/7 for at least 4, more if they go to grad school, years.
It's fine to say something like "No porn, games, file sharing, etc." at work or at a high school where business and education are the only things that should be happening. Why? Because the employees/students should go home and do those things on their own Internet connection.

But that doesn't work in a college. The students can't just go home to their own Internet connection, they're stuck at the university with the network available in the dorms. The universities need to buy more bandwidth instead of throttling the speed down to levels non-suitable for gaming. There will be a time in the near future where Internet bandwidth available to each user will be a large portion of the decision process for students applying to college. Right now I'm applying to about 5 different colleges that are 99% identical, if I'm accepted into all of them then I'm going to have to decide between them based on which one has the greenest trees, is closest to a bar, has the best cell phone coverage, and which one has the least amount of throttling on the Internet connections in the dorms.

Re:Doubts

[JNighthawk]

Thank you *very much*. I'm tired of reading people's bullshit, thinking networking an FPS is easy and shouldn't require much bandwidth, while making sure that no one can cheat easily.

To those that think it is: try it.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a classic example of devolving and microsoftization of the gaming protocols. If the game was running locally using broadcast+ unicast or multicast_unicast to inform all local participants and only one dedicated hypernode checked what is going on outside the small "local world" there would have been no bandwidth/pps problem. Now now, why do we have to blame Microsoft for everything? The network was obviously not shaping UDP packets, and the routers were probably a few decades old (this is a university we're talking about).

For clients to form this mesh with no server involvement would also mean that other players will have to trust that their rivals/buddies are not using a modified version that's making characters fly. A central trusted server is essential in this case to enforce world rules among players.

DRM/crypto/whatever can be used to validate the clients, but if you don't have a server checking all that then it's impossible to trust other clients.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but in the long term it's a poor solution for online gaming. Eventually the game servers are going to go off-line permanently due to a lack of enough consumer demand to justify uptime costs. Because the use of centralized servers is necessary for these games, gamers will effectively be left in the dark and unable to play online anymore. And if games like Pac-Man and Super Mario can remain popular after more than 20 years, who's to say that today's games won't retain that kind of popularity in the future? Future generations of gamers will be shafted if they want to play the games of yesteryear with each other online. Sure, there's tunneling software like XBConnect that will allow most LAN-enabled games to play online, but it's hardly the same experience. You also need an idle PC to link your console to, something that may not be available to college students as this, coupled with the one-device-per-Ethernet-connector policies of some campuses, could mean that someone not playing may have to forfeit their Internet connection and/or PC.

The P2P methods of online gaming in the past may not have had the benefits of the client/server model, but at least you can still play them online so long as there are people to connect to.

Re:Doubts

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, its sort of a shame that its not open source so people could see the complexity and work to improve it. I can't begin to imagine the crazy things people would say if the linux scheduler wasn't open. Is there a low latency open source protocol that could be adapted?

Re:Doubts

[Torvaun]

NewYorkCountyLawyer != NewYorkCountryLawyer. He doesn't claim to be from a rural section of New York in any way.

I personally enjoy his posts because he can speak with authority about the letter of the law, as opposed to all the people giving free legal advice prefaced by IANAL. I don't actually care about his, nor anyone else's stance regarding copyright infringement.

Re:Doubts

[JNighthawk]

The library I fiddle with in my spare time is RakNet, which is open source. However, that's just a networking library, not a protocol. Protocols are much more game-specific.

Re:Doubts

[cpritchett]

If your university did buy more bandwidth, I can assure you the quality of the students gaming experience didn't cross anyone's mind. It's not quite as simple as the network admin calling up the local ISP and going to the next tier.

Aside from the argument that the bandwidth is for educational use, trying to support gaming in our dorms would be a full-time job based on the number of calls and emails we get on a daily basis about it.

People use to be all "well that sucks, i'll get over it." Now I've got parents calling wondering why Johnny can't play his favorite MMO that he "really, really likes to play." I seriously thought that a guy that came to my office a few weeks ago was going to hit me because he couldn't play FFXI.

The worse part though, is when a group of students try to fake network problems in order for us to fix Johnny's issues, because, apparently, we don't monitor the network at all until 20 people on the same floor complain.

If they really need their fix, they are more than welcome to get a cable modem from the local cable company. I can't vouch for all Universities, but nobody here is forced to use our LAN.

Re:Doubts

[tedrlord]

Highly paid professionals know more than you, don't worry.

Really? Explain why Java is so popular then.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the TCR (Technical Certification Requirement) rules that Xbox 360 games must pass in order to be certified for release is that the games must be able to function correctly with an upstream bandwidth of 64Kbit. Some titles do get an exception to the occasional TCR, i.e. games developed in Asia where 1Mbit upstream is defacto standard and it would cost too much to re-engineer the game's network code for the rest of the world, but mostly the TCR test teams are tough bastards and won't allow TCR failures.

Re:Doubts

[arivanov]

By making it "client-server" versus "mesh+reduced number of connections" you are not winning anything as far as cheating is concerned.

A client which can forge its state reports will still forge its state.

Re:Doubts

[arivanov]

Err... You are mistaken. Deeply.

16 students playing against each other.

1. Student Joe Bloggz gets spectacularly fragged into bits spreading gore and guts around by stepping on a mine.
2. Data about the event goes back to server.
3. Data about the event comes back from server to students Joe Smogz, Joe Trogz, Joe Quogz, etc simultaneously in one nice, big, fat spike. This spike is enough to cause some congestion and piss of a number of people running X to the university computational environment.

You simply do not have that scenario when they are playing 16 people offsite. If Joe Bloggz currently offsite gets fragged the data goes back only to Joe Quogz who is playing with him, not to the other 15 players playing at that time. While the average bandwidth is still the same, the peak ends up 16 times less.

Re:Doubts

[FredMenace]

Here's the rub: back in 1994, Bungie put out a Macintosh 1ps game called Marathon. Now this game Marathon had rudimentary "round robin" LAN networking (AppleTalk-based, not IP). While there was a "gathering" machine, there wasn't one authoritative server - each copy of the game ran its own simulation of the world, and passed some information about what keys its player had pressed on to the next machine in the circle, and you just hoped they were all concluding the same things were happening at the same time. The problem was that if they got out of sync due to any excessive delays, packet loss, etc. (imagine two players think they have killed each other, before each receives the message that the other may have killed them first), or even internal bugs where they each calculated and randomly came up with different results, the game would be irretrievable - one player would think they were kicking ass, while the others would wonder why that player was facing a wall at point blank range, repeatedly suiciding with the rocket launcher. Nothing to do but abandon the game and start over. This happened quite a lot. It also precluded Internet play entirely. (Incidentally, since the "film/demo" recording feature used the same technology, it also happened sometimes that films would get "out of sync" with the playback machine relative to the machine that recorded it, and thus not make any sense either.)

Naturally, this was such a successfull network model, Bungie chose to use it again in Marathon 2: Durandal. And again in Marathon: Infinity. As well as Myth: the Fallen Lords, Myth 2: Soulblighter, and Halo: Combat Evolved (the code having been worked over somewhat by this time, without really fixing its fundamental flaws). This despite the fact that id had shown a superior way with Quake (specifically QuakeWorld) since 1996, and that others, such as Epic, had struggled (and eventually succeeded) to create similarly-good networking in games like Unreal Tournament soon afterward. It wasn't until Halo 2 that Bungie finally decided that having crappy 10-year old networking code wasn't really the best idea. More to the point, the game had to run on Xbox Live, and the old networking simply DOES NOT WORK (or at least provide a playable game) for a 1ps game on the internet, though it marginally worked in the RTS Myth series. So they HAD to fix the networking, if they wanted any Xbox Live networking at all.

So yes, as of Halo 2, they have fairly modern networking with decent prediction (borrowing liberally from community-developed ideas that were applied to Counterstrike etc., for instance with each client not only asserting what controls were affected by the player, but what actions it believes should have been taken in the world, which the server will only override if it doesn't fit with its own model), but it sure took them long enough to get there.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

In 3rd world countries, we get FTTH (fiber optics) 100Mbit link for $150 a month. Hooking up is free. T-2

Re:Doubts

[TheLink]

I am not a game programmer, but the way I see it, bandwidth is not the main problem - latency is.

Naive/poor implementations don't degrade gracefully once you have significant latency. And latencies significantly longer than the time to refresh a screen is very common over wan links.

Re:Doubts

[mcrh]

Never use the word "Microsoftization" again.

Why? It's a perfectly cromulent word!

Re:Doubts

[mikkelm]

[blockquote]If your university did buy more bandwidth, I can assure you the quality of the students gaming experience didn't cross anyone's mind. It's not quite as simple as the network admin calling up the local ISP and going to the next tier.[/blockquote] That's what our customers typically do. Works fine.

Re:Doubts

[Lurks]

This is wrong, I don't think you understand the issues.

You can't forge the client state because the game world simulation runs on the server. If a client does something that's out of bounds of what can be done, it's basically culled.

You CAN still do some sorts of cheating, by acting within the limits of the game such as using aim bots. But that's it, no giving yourself health or running super fast.

Seriously, various mechanisms for game servers to operate have been properly research and beta tested in oh so many ways for a very long time now. There *are* some lame game protocols out there but equally, one shouldn't be so quick to jump up with your arm chair criticism as if you understand all that's involved.

Re:Doubts

[jettawu]

If a packet has to get retransmitted, or held because it's not in order, it's going to be stale by the time it arrives, so you might as well ignore it.

Not entirely true. I have reverse engineered the protocol for a few games. For most of the ones I have looked at, certain packets get retransmitted or held for order. They use UDP, but write their own packet ordering and retransmission code so that they can have certain packets considered "reliable" and in order. These packets usually contain control data.

For instance, when a player spawns... If that packet is just sent using the usual UDP method without regard for whether it gets there or in what order, some clients may never receive the packet and never realize that player has respawned. Or they could receive play data for that player before they receive the spawn itself. Then you have a player running around in the game that others don't know is ready to run around yet and the game state gets desynced.

They don't use a complete TCP implementation so that the application layer protocol implementing the TCP features is more streamlined, but some data is required to get to all clients reliably, so most FPS games cannot be described as just a "spew of packets".

Re:Doubts

[DerWulf]

PC WAN games usually include an inbuild or standalone server. Even if no central servers exists you could host you CS using dyndns on your local pc and invite people on message boards etc.

Re:Doubts

[wolrahnaes]

If they really need their fix, they are more than welcome to get a cable modem from the local cable company. I can't vouch for all Universities, but nobody here is forced to use our LAN. I moved off campus last year for this reason. The local cable provider has amazing performance (I capped out my 10mbit connection for literally weeks at a time without trouble) and no bandwidth caps (see previous statement). The university, in their infinite wisdom, had decided one useless "community channel" that no one watched was worth more than having a proper internet connection available to students, so they put in gear which let them add that channel but made it impossible to get a cable modem on campus. The dorm phone system was tied in to the campus PBX as well, so DSL wasn't an option either.

I have no problem with shaping the connection, having worked for the university's IT department I know how necessary it was, just don't block us from getting alternative connections.

Re:Doubts

[Poromenos1]

What happened in MW3? Double deaths and the like?

Re:Doubts

[Fedarkyn]

3rd world country dorms dont have internet access. Only at the university's labs.

Re:Doubts

[Kizeh]

I checked my university's traffic statistics, and I can't see any significant change in traffic volume around the time of Halo's release.

That being said and speaking as a network professional, yes, the original post was pretty useless.

Re:Doubts

[arivanov]

Do not see how it is better than running a copy of the world on each machine and exchanging checksums of state as well as individual player actions. If a machine tries to forge a world it is kicked out of the mesh. Running it locally also vastly reduces required network resource and is not much higher drain on CPU resource (you still have to have a huge local snapshot anyway).

Re:Doubts

[petermgreen]

it's not just about cheating, the original quake was client-server yet I don't belive it had any real anti cheat protections.

Client server has a number of big advantages unrelated to cheating in the online multiplayer world:

* client-server much better suits the typical internet model of clients on slow connections and servers on fast ones.
* client-server allows for drop in play which is so much nicer for the casual gamer than having to wait in a chatroom until a game is availible.
* client-server typically has one authoritive copy of game state so out of sync errors don't happen. This makes it both more resiliant and easier to code.

Re:Doubts

[l0cust]

Seconded. Funniest comment in a long time. Sitting with my collegues in a conference room and now everyone is looking at me weirdly. :/

Re:Doubts

[RESPAWN]

If they really need their fix, they are more than welcome to get a cable modem from the local cable company. I can't vouch for all Universities, but nobody here is forced to use our LAN. I can't speak for all universities either, but as a counter example my University did not allow students living on campus to acquire internet from outside providers. This is because they had their own internal cable network and phone network. On the one hand, it was nice having those amenities provided to us automatically, but on the other hand, we were kind of stuck when the quality of service would drop. However, cellular modem cards weren't nearly as popular or as cheap when I graduated as they are now, so in the case of bandwidth, that might be an option for some students. (I would imagine latency kind of sucks, though...)

Re:Doubts

[mollymoo]

Beh. Ten years ago, when me and a bunch of friends used to write simple games as high school kids, we never got worse than some kind of a minimal spanning tree, doubly-connected w/o bridges if the game in question allowed dropping nodes. This is basic graph theory, something any CS student has to know.

And highly paid professionals should be a lot better educated than a group of kids, right?

Halo 3 is an FPS and the networking code has to handle internet play. That means that latency is important and the links are likely to be ADSL or cable modems, which have non-trivial latency. Pumping your data through multiple links of a spanning tree given those constraints would be completely fucking insane.

Re:Doubts

[bbcisdabomb]

For some reason, I like being able to play on my favorite CSS clan's servers. I don't know, there's just something about playing on a ranked server that most people like, as well as the ability to play on more than one server. "Make a LAN server! Put up a dedicated box!" And watch as the school drops your internet for too much traffic. Not smart.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

i know halo 1 used prioritization. that is, everything in the game had a priority. when network bandwidth usage became high, the priority level was raised and lower priority items/actions were not sent over the network (eg: like a grenade toss, though you would still get the explosion... if you were near by, you would still see the grenade toss).

this meant that a halo 1 server would typically max out at 350kb/s (each way) once it got to 10 or so user, regardless of how many additional players joined.

the other thing is VOIP - oh god that was ugly back in the day. On xbox 1 it was like 700B/s and ps2 was like 2.2KB/s.

something i wish my company would get the gist of...

Re:Doubts

[Guspaz]

"The students in the dorms playing the new game were going through the dorm's T1"

I think that's more the problem. A single T1 isn't even enough for one residential user anymore, let alone dozens or hundreds. To have a dorm on a T1 in this day and age is just incompetence. Most DSL connections (5-7mbit where I'm from) are far faster than a T1 for downstream. And yes, I realize the difference between a DSL line and a T1, but when you're using that T1 for residential use, all the non-oversubscribed and SLA business-oriented stuff doesn't really matter.

Internet games don't use multicast packets. Playing Halo 3 over the internet therefore would only produce one stream of low-bandwidth packets to the XBL server. Even LAN games only do multicast for locating hosts. Once you're in-game, they tend to only send packets to the host.

You speak of having 1000 hosts sending multiple packets per second. Having 1000 hosts on a T1 line in a dorm is almost criminal. While a game might use, let's say, 20KB/s of bandwidth in any given direction (very little, many multiplayer games use significantly less), if you're going to cram hundreds or thousands of users onto a connection that can only do about 200KB/s, then you're going to have problems, and it's not the game's fault.

The dorms should either provide their tenants with a reasonably fast connection, or allow them to purchase their own DSL/cable connections.

Re:Doubts

[quanticle]

But doesn't UDP have more overhead than TCP? Eh, I guess I don't know that much about this after all.

Not to be too hard on you or anything, but the entire point of UDP is that its a connectionless protocol designed to have less overhead than TCP. UDP is used for things like streaming video and games, where the occasional dropped packet doesn't mean much in the long run, whereas TCP is used for data transfer, where a dropped packet could mean a corrupted binary.

Re:Doubts

[Blakey Rat]

Whether there was a hit or not was determined by the shootee, not the shooter (or the server.) Which means that to hit another mech, you had to lead them based on their ping. (For players with a low ping, you could aim directly at their mech and hit them, for high-ping players you had to lead several mech-lengths.) Players would run background downloads or other things specifically to screw up their ping and make themselves virtually invincible.

Compare to Tribes, a game that came out around the same time, where the server would determine hits based on whether the player *saw* their crosshair on the target. If the firing player saw a hit, there was a hit. A much more fair system.

Re:Doubts

[vimh42]

Do not try to send UDP packets. That is impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there is no UDP.

Re:Doubts

[Torontoman]

Man, how things have changed. When I went to University in 1993... the internet was JUST coming onto the scene (no GUI and I still remember my bizarre email address from undergrad.) I kid you not about this: Back in those days were weren't concerned about this bandwidth issue for computers - we were ready to revolt because the PHONE LINES got overloaded each night from 8 pm - 1am from people calling in Pizza orders. We thought it was the end of the world - and the seniors just laughed and explained how back in their day it wasn't just the phones - at least we had a line per room because they made due with party lines 1 line for each 2 rooms. I don't want to come down on people currently in school or sound preachy that's not my point here: In a few years it'll be something else that is causing campus life to suck somewhat. Overall it's a blast of a time and part of the 'fond' recollection is in how we did without some things and how we had fun in spite of it all. (And wow how insignificant it will feel in 4 years that you couldn't frag dudes on the fastest network going).

Re:Doubts

[blhack]

Well that was a high school that probably had close to NO network resources. The OP referenced "Unix Clusters" meaning that his univ. most likely does physics/biology research, which usually come with big fat honking grants of cash.

Re:Doubts

[InfoVore]

You think that's news you're reading?

Re:Doubts

[JNighthawk]

They're both a problem, really, but the latency problem causes the bandwidth problem. It takes a *lot* of bandwidth to try and keep a decent picture of the game on a client. Your two main problems are latency and packet loss. Packet loss is one of the things that causes a large bandwidth spike, since you need to re-transmit new delta updates since that packet was dropped.

It's really, *really* hard to make a protocol that degrades gracefully with packet loss. It's a little less hard for latency, but still not easy. The goal, as I see it, should not be to make the game play smooth at a 250 ms ping, but to play very, very good at 100 m . Making a protocol that degrades gracefully typically means it won't be as tight while in optimal conditions.

It's the same way with computer specs, I suppose. You don't want to degrade performance/features at the high-end so it'll be better playable at the low end.

Re:Doubts

[quintesse]

Sorry but no, assuming they are all playing in a multi player game with largish number of people and active gameplay there will be spikes all the time. Where you are correct is that playing the same game it is a lot more probable that those spikes will coincide (assuming there isn't some kind of system already that won't send data to players that aren't "close" in the virtual world). But you we're talking about "a form of amplification/positive feedback loop" which this just isn't. The data won't just "amplify", the max data can be calculated easily by doing 16x max data per client/second. If your network can handle that it can easily handle the most chaotic fragfest those 16 students can throw at it.

Re:Doubts

[Some_Llama]

"and it prevents cheating, since each client sees only what it absolutely needs to see to function."

Not really.. if that were true then no cheats would exist.. in fact there are many for pretty much every game, the only reason they would less so on consoles would be the locked down nature of consoles (hardware/software).

When you're playing an online game of CS for example.. your client needs to know where other people are so that it can display them to you, make footsteps in the right place and vice versa.. so your client is actually getting a lot of useful information from the server that it can exploit.. there is/was one anticheat i know of that actually takes that information that the server sends and then wonks it so the client cheat program can't glean anything useful from it, i forget the name of it off hand but it had to be run on the client side as well which in itself proved a race to hack that/keep it updated.

Re:Doubts

[HTH NE1]

Well, trees, doors, walls, signs, etc tend to not move a lot. So usually all you need to send are the players themselves, bullets, and that's about it. And grenades, rockets, dropped weaponry, vehicles, runaway trains, lifts, conveyor belts, barrels, crates, flats, various movable debris, where the flag/skull/bomb is.... Granted, not all of these are moving all the time and/or in a non-predetermined manner.

Fog-filled levels however seem to be quite demanding at least on the local hardware. I sure hope fog isn't something that needs to be tracked.

And that's just what I can come up with from Halo 2; I don't have Halo 3 yet.

Re:Doubts

[Eil]

I have to say, we don't see the word "trombone" used as a verb nearly often enough.

Re:Doubts

[EvilSporkMan]

Let N denote the number of players.

1 server, all players connect to it: N connections.

All players connect to all other players: N * (N-1) / 2 connections, which is significantly more. If I *don't* talk directly to some other players (and thus have less connections and have to send less data over the network), I have to *wait* for traffic with them to go through some other node.

Disclaimer: I don't know shit about networking for games, I'm just a senior in CS.

Re:Doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit whining and go do your freaking homework. "Meditation is not what you think."

Re:Doubts

[arivanov]

Err... NO. If announcements of changes are on Multicast everyone maintains 3-4 connections - its multicast binding and a partial mesh to recover lost frames from ones that have seen it.

I didn't RTFA...

[A beautiful mind]

...but at least now I have the excuse that there is no FA.

I must be new here

[OAB_X]

What a remarkably useless story.

Re:I must be new here

[I'm New Around Here]

What makes you say that?

Re:I must be new here

[Romancer]

Probably the facts:
1. There is no link to an actual article or any other related or corroborating information source.
2. The summary admits that certain router features were not enabled, and simply enabling them fixed the "problem".
3. The title of "Halo 3 Causing Network Issues" has so far been only superficially associated with the "problems" they were having by giant leaps of non technical assumption.
4. This is another KDawson post/nonstory.

Re:I must be new here

[Jarjarthejedi]

Well it's remarkability has been proven by the number of comments.

It's uselessness lies in the fact that it was a mis configured router causing the problems, and configuring it right fixed it. 99% of people on /. don't need to know this (because they're not running a university network, have configured their routers right, or were expecting this sort of thing from the largest game release in history) and the other 1% didn't read the article.

I'm not sure about the story part, though I guess any yarn told by an individual about an event qualifies.

Therefore the tale is a story, is remarkable, and is useless, ergo 'What a remarkably useless story'

Honestly this one irritates even me, and that's saying something. I'm usually fine with non-stories, as I'm bored enough to not care. Talking about how you didn't properly set up your university network and didn't prepare for the largest game release in history (I'm sorry, but if you're running a network for college kids, why in the world weren't you ready for Halo 3? You should know for a fact that it's going to be huge, if you don't then you're living in a cave) doesn't make me want to like you, and then mentioning that your response was basically to shut down the kids ability to play proudly, like 'Look at me, I'm so smart, I killed a bunch of kids fun because I couldn't think of any of the other hundred ways to solve my problem and would rather just shut them down', well that makes me want to punch you in the face for being dumb, and proud of that dumbness.

Re:I must be new here

[sumdumass]

It seems to me that you got nothing that you didn't want to get from the story.

There is more here then your willing to consider or admit. First, We don't know how many people were using Halo, it eludes to gamers complaining after they got the network under control. Second, if it is something with Halo that requires an unusually large amount of UDP traffic, it could cause outages in other areas too. Like ISPs or inter conects that might be going flaky. Or it could cause a lot of other things to happen. That why it is a good idea to discuss it a little. If you don't want to, then look at another story submission. It is that simple.

Now, I would agree with you that it isn't particularly front page news worthy. It would normally only attract a few people to comment unles something was discovered that could be dangerous. But I strongly disagree with your idea that "like 'Look at me, I'm so smart, I killed a bunch of kids fun because I couldn't think of any of the other hundred ways to solve my problem and would rather just shut them down'"

Really, name a few of those hundred ways. And you do realize that they didn't shut the kids down, they took control of a faulting or failing network and found that in doing so cause issues for the kids. Why don't you suggest an way to correct the problems he was having other then shutting the kids down? Chances are th network was there before he was and chances are that it never had a problem like this until Halo3 came out so consider that too. I mean if your so smart to think of a hundred other ways and he is obviously so stupid, then let him know a couple of those ways. Or are you one of those people who look for excuses to argue and put someone down?

Re:I must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

your response was basically to shut down the kids ability to play proudly, like 'Look at me, I'm so smart, I killed a bunch of kids fun because I couldn't think of any of the other hundred ways to solve my problem and would rather just shut them down'

You don't get it do you? He got to yell "get off my lawn" and actually kick the kids off his lawn.

You might not believe me now, but someday you too will know the heady joy that comes from utterly despising children and ruining their fun.

Re:I must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and it's sure to be dup'd

Re:I must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

the other 1% didn't read the article.

What is this article you speak of?

Re:I must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

He's speaking of an article because he didn't even read the summary!

Re:I must be new here

[swillden]

'Look at me, I'm so smart, I killed a bunch of kids fun because I couldn't think of any of the other hundred ways to solve my problem and would rather just shut them down'

F'rexample? Note that in the short term, getting the network going again can't wait for pulling cable, installing hardware or adding bandwidth (internal or external).

Peak.

[Anonymous Coward]

FFS. PEAK.

Re:Peak.

[colourmyeyes]

I was wondering where the "peek" tag was

This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Poorly configured firewall and packet shapers - reconfigured them and now stuff works better?

This passes for a story at slashdot now?

Re:This is a story?

[blowdart]

It has a "blame Microsoft" angle, what more do you want?

Re:This is a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

A comprehensive article with all the gory details justifying "blame Microsoft", so that nobody would actually read it anyway?

Re:This is a story?

[XereX]

Clearly whenever a top ten game of the decade comes out this netadmin doesnt have network issues... only Halo 3...

Save yourself the criticism next time nub, and include something nerdy like a packet capture.

-X

And?

[VeteranNoob]

So, poor network design caused the network to become saturated. QoS rules were applied to UDP, as they should have been, and the problem has gone away.

Where's the story?

Re:And?

[Blakey Rat]

It's just posted here so we can get reams of replies talking about how over-rated Halo is, how much the Xbox (made by Microsoft!) sucks, how great Nintendo is in comparison, and how games used to have more "fun" back in the olden days. The network problem is entirely secondary.

So it's pretty much like every other Slashdot Games post.

Re:And?

[MightyMartian]

Indeed, the story should be "More dipshit net admins with fancy-ass certificates but no brains fuck up QoS once more."

Re:And?

[s4m7]

games used to have more "fun" back in the olden days It's not that they're putting any less fun in these days, but do you know how expensive it is to manufacture fun in industrialized nations like japan and the U.S.? Now they're using more affordable Chinese-made fun which is doped with melamine and lead to make it cheaper.

Re:And?

[ILuvRamen]

you're right. No other university or network has reported problems. It's probably just them and their bad design. Even if it wasn't, let's take a vote. Is Halo 3 more important or are Unix systems more important?

Re:And?

[Orange Crush]

It seems to me that the in general geek perception, the 360 is pretty well regarded. I think it's gotten a pretty fair analysis in the geek world--a generally* well built, correctly-priced piece of hardware, competently marketed and released well enough ahead of the other players to have the upper hand w/ regards to game libraries.

Re:And?

[nschubach]

a generally* well built

<smallprint>* You may notice a 30% failure rate and very loud noises while playing a game. This is expected behavior. Your mileage may vary. Microsoft is not responsible for the loss of life during a fire cause by overheating bricks. Please consult your local fire codes before starting. Unit must remain in the off position while not in use. Shipping unit in for repair may be required. Additional handling fees may apply.</smallprint>

Seriously though...

The general geek perception is that the machine is a piece of shit. Unless you happen to work for Microsoft or have devoted your life to being it's love slave.

Re:And?

[JWSmythe]

no shit.

    Actually, he doesn't indicate that he DOES have the certificate. :)

    I agree with ... well, almost every posting. Big deal, they had their equipment set up wrong. The heavy usage from the game showed the problem, they fixed it. end of story.

    A few years ago, a friend of mine with very little (like almost none) network experience wanted to take a class for his CCNA. I'd been using Cisco equipment for years, and am very proficient, but I decided to go with him, just so I could finally get the certificate.

    On the test, I didn't do so hot on some of the token ring, and ISDN questions. Oddly enough, I hadn't touched either in years, and all my experience had been with ethernet and large WAN configurations. I breezed through the class (sat back, hacked other students equipment to change the hostname, etc, etc). It was fun for me, and I did my best to keep from being too disruptive.

    About 40% of the people testing passed on the first try. I was surprised, since most of them seemed clueless in class. Another 20% passed on the second try. Those people are going to show their CCNA on their resume (heck, I do).

    When it comes to making things work, most of them will be lost until they get some serious real world experience. Then they'll be posting the same thing. "OMG, we took a traffic hit from ____ and we had to fix something to save the network." Hell, saving the day is part of a SysAdmin's job. There's no thank you's, no pats on the back. no "atta boy!". At most, you get to sit down at the pub with your friends, and laugh about it over a couple (dozen) pints. There's always a server crashing, a router misconfigured, a battle cruiser, a death ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and we'll deal with it without anything more than our regular old paycheck in the box each week.

    Another pint?

Re:And?

[fm6]

The story is that evil network administrators have interfered with dormies' fundamental right to use up all the bandwidth they want! We should be grateful to this guy for reporting himself to us!

Re:And?

[xSauronx]

About 40% of the people testing passed on the first try. I was surprised, since most of them seemed clueless in class. Another 20% passed on the second try. Those people are going to show their CCNA on their resume (heck, I do).

I intend to begin a CCNA class in the spring myself. The only network-related experience I have is as a tech for a wireless ISP where I worked for a year. I worked closely with our admins (both of whom *are* experienced and seem quite knowledgeable) and enjoyed learning about (and dealing with) the networking basics that I was introduced to.

I have no cisco experience whatsoever. *but* I want to learn, and dont really see a way to get a job without experience...or a certificate. I dont know why sometimes people look down so much at those who get certs without having a lot of experience, doesnt it mean they *want* to learn? I *want* to learn about networking, though more especially *nix administration. Because of this Im running Linux at home(ubuntu, debian, and soon centOS) and reading all I can, and its the only way I can learn anything, but it doesnt solve the problem of having practical experience :(

Re:And?

[Chandon Seldon]

The general geek perception is that the machine is a piece of shit. Unless you happen to work for Microsoft or have devoted your life to being it's love slave.

That's the Sony / Nintendo fanboy perception, which differs from the "General Geek Perception". Now, all three of the current-generation consoles are DRM infested crap... but console fanboys seem to be willing to ignore that.

Once you accept that any console is worth buying, each of the three have their advantages and disadvantages - that end up making any of the three a perfectly defensible choice.

The 360 has decent graphics, has Halo 3, is cheaper than the PS3, and has good games. That's enough for a lot of people.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what makes either fucking one of you qualified to proclaim a general geek perception. Seems to me like it's a polarizing machine, and your cliche 'generalization' isn't helping anything.

Re:And?

[Chandon Seldon]

You're saying that it's even vaguely excusable for a dorm network to not have good enough connectivity to handle some students playing video games?

Seriously, we could have an interesting discussion about how appropriate it is for a dorm resident to be downloading 150 gigs/week off Usenet, but it's perfectly reasonable for them to expect to have a functional network connection that they can use. I mean... they do *live* there and pay good money to do so - usually including a telecommunications fee that more than covers the cost of a high speed network connection.

Re:And?

[Blakey Rat]

The parent would be the prototypical Slashdot post I was making fun of. Just in case anybody needed an example. (Unfortunately it doesn't mention how great Nintendo is... please try harder next time, nschubach!)

Re:And?

[totally bogus dude]

The 360 has Halo 3, and has good games.

I like that you categorise "Halo 3" and "good games" separately. ;)

Re:And?

[mdarksbane]

I think the general geek perception is that the hardware reliability is shit, but it completely owns the other consoles when it comes to current game selection.

Whether you like Halo or not, the list of 90% and higher games for 360 is 10x the length of equivalent games on PS3 or Gamecube. Whatever the reasons for that, it is still truth currently.

Re:And?

[Orange Crush]

Yeah, that was the jist of the footnote I meant to put in before I prematurely hit post. By "well built" I meant it's a very capable machine under the hood and can deliver some impressive looking games and the online service is top notch. The QC issues around RRoD, overheating and the whole power brick craziness are unacceptable, but MS is trying to mitigate the issues w/ warranties and (hopefully) fixing the problems on new models.

Re:And?

[cmat]

Someone forgot to enable QoS on /.

Re:And?

[JWSmythe]

There's a secret to having good skills. Get experience.

Go on eBay, and buy an old Catalyst 2916, or 2924. Set it up at home. Play with the settings. Figure out how to set up snmp, and then graph your ports. Generate traffic, and see how it behaves. Be good. Be bad. Find exploits and run them against your equipment. Look around the script kiddie sites for ways to generate traffic. Use the seemingly normal stuff, and the obviously bad things. It's a fake network, you can't hurt anything. If you do, wipe out your configurations, and start over. :) Do firmware upgrades. More fun is to screw up an upgrade. Put the wrong one on, and figure out how to fix it (hint: serial cable, very slowly). You can get images not-so-legally through various places, including a neat program, "ISO Hunter"

Then you can pick up a couple T1 routers. Make yourself a T1 crossover cable, and hook them together. Route two fake networks together. Spend a few extra bucks, and get a few more, so you can have a more complex network. Play with the basic routing protocols too.

You'll appreciate doing it once you actually go to the CCNA class. You won't be playing in the dark, you'll be walking in with experience. Things that you'll break as a novice will help you learn, and since you'll be doing it on your own, you won't have a choice but to learn how to do it.

When it comes time to take the Cisco test, there are several simulator tests, so it would be to your advantage to have some real world experience. If I remember the scoring correctly, they said I passed 100% of the simulators.

The guy who ran the school I learned at would buy every piece of equipment he could afford off of eBay. He had about 100 pieces in the classroom for lab work. Since I had experience with it, I had a lot of fun. A lot of people were asking "you plug what in where? What does that command mean? How do you ....?"

I originally learned Cisco by getting thrown into it. Years ago, I was suddenly in charge of a network with a 7200 series router, a Catalyst 2924, and an original PIX firewall (4u - Pentium Pro 200 based system). It was all fun and games until one day our provider went down, and their support said "Oh, it must be your firewall, take it out." and then "Your network still doesn't work now? Well, we can't support bringing it back up. We have a guy who can help, but he won't be in until next Thursday." Welcome to the Cisco crash course. Learn it or loose your job. It took me an hour, but I tied it all back together, and over the next month I made it better until it worked better than ever.

I had an odd learning curve several months ago. I bought up 3 Catalyst 5000 series switches, and a whole bunch of cards. They behave a lot differently than the others that I had used before. The commands are different, but the ideas are the same. It was a bit of an adjustment. The 5000 series switches are cheap, but you'll likely want to learn on the Cisco IOS first, and then the CatOS. After I played with them for a while, I sold all 3 at a profit, since I bought them untested, my experimenting time now made them tested and verified switches, and I sold them as known good working switches with a 90 day warranty. I got a few bad parts in lots, but even those were covered by my profits. My customers were happy. This was my favorite one:

http://jwsmythe.com/ebay/Cisco_5500_13_slot.jpg

I got a second supervisor in another lot, which matched the first, so I pulled the top most ethernet card, and put the supervisor in as a hot spare. It's never needed it, but it's there just in case. I just gave it to them, and left the extra ethernet card as a spare for them. Be careful if you get a 13 slot 5500, they're heavy, even with no cards installed, and then need two 20A power c

Re:And?

[rincefire]

the list of 90% and higher games for 360 is 10x the length of equivalent games on PS3 or Gamecube

you are so wrong by choosing the wrong console as nintendo representative. wii maybe, but cube easily beats shit out of 360. all that zeldas and sonics and stuff.

Re:And?

[fm6]

...usually including a telecommunications fee that more than covers the cost of a high speed network connection...

There's a difference between "high speed" and "on-demand maximum bandwidth with low latency". The latter is what serious gamers need, and it costs a lot more to implement and support. I suspect most dorm telecom fees don't begin to cover it. If they did, students who just want basic high speed web and email access would be up in arms, since they'd be paying for network capacity they don't use.

Re:And?

[Chandon Seldon]

There's a difference between "high speed" and "on-demand maximum bandwidth with low latency".

No application that I know of needs both "maximum bandwidth" and "low latency", except maybe a live HDTV stream. Gaming needs reasonable bandwidth and low latency - that shouldn't be hard to provide on a university network.

I suspect most dorm telecom fees don't begin to cover it. If they did, students who just want basic high speed web and email access would be up in arms, since they'd be paying for network capacity they don't use.

I pay $70/semester (3 months) for my dorm telecom fee - and internet connectivity is the only telecom service I use. 3 meg/768k DSL is $35/month (or $105/semester). Taking into account the economies of scale for the 800 students in my dorm building alone, it seems reasonable to expect that the school should be able to provide network service at least equivalent to the DSL I mentioned - and here at my school, they normally do. It should be pretty similar at other schools.

Even if the problem is one of not charging the students enough for the network connectivity they want to use, degrading specific applications still isn't the solution. The correct solution is a QOS configuration that doesn't break applications combined with reasonable high-bandwidth charges. If one user downloads 150 gigs in one day there is no problem if the download was QOSed to bulk and the user was charged a couple bucks for the high bandwidth usage.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

sonics lol

Re:And?

[fm6]

Well, your school has a two-tier system, which is both a good idea and which negates my argument about not all students wanting to pay for a gaming capable network. Indeed, for $35/month I'd expect a pretty responsive network, even from a for-profit provider.

It's also evident that your school's decision-makers are forward thinking. But not all schools are so lucky. I doubt that all Universities have a system like yours. Indeed, I would expect the typical U administrator to say something like, "We'll give them a network that's good enough for email and for getting class materials, and that's it. Students aren't here to watch videos and play games." Yes, you can make a case for a top quality network having educational uses, but that's not going to appeal to the educational bureaucrat. And from the tone of the submitter's story ("we've been shaping TCP packets but forgot to shape UDP packets") they're probably a low-budget operation.

Maybe I've just blundered into supporting your original point, which was (forgive me if I misinterpret) that a good school really needs to have a good network. Then again, there are a lot of factors that can make that difficult (besides the brain-dead administrator). Like having an out-of-date network infrastructure that you can't find the money to upgrade. Or having a political mandate to keep fees down (particularly important for a state-run school).

There's also the fact that you can saturate any network if you try hard enough. Even the biggest resource is still finite.

Re:And?

[Chandon Seldon]

Hmm... apparently I wasn't quite as clear as I was trying to be.

My school charges me a $70/semester telecom fee. In exchange for that, I get network access.

For that $20+/month ($70/semester), my school should be able to deliver service at least as good as a somewhat more expensive home user connection due to economies of scale. They usually do - which is apparently praise-worthy compared to schools that can't even handle some students playing Halo 3. Unfortunately, my school still has a has a Comcast-esque "use too much bandwidth (we won't tell you what's too much) and you get cut off" policy.

If the network admins at my school were a little bit more useful, they could allow students to use whatever bandwidth we wanted to. All they would have to do is A.) set up QOS properly to prevent high-bandwidth users from degrading low-latency applications and B.) charge for high bandwidth usage. I haven't needed the bandwidth that badly so I haven't really pushed this idea with the network admins, but it really seems like the cleanest solution to the problem.

Note that charging reasonable fees for excess bandwidth usage is really important. It provides the right incentives for the parties involved - Students who don't really want the bandwidth won't use it (but students who want to do something useful won't be discouraged by the small fees), and when the bandwidth does get used the school will be happy because they'll collect the money to pay the upstream provider and probably a bit more to go in the "network upgrades" fund for when YouTube goes High Def.

Re:And?

[fm6]

. All they would have to do is A.) set up QOS properly to prevent high-bandwidth users from degrading low-latency applications and B.) charge for high bandwidth usage.

Well, to my inexpert ears that sounds like a really good idea. But in fact no ISP of any kind, does that. (Not to my knowledge, anyway.) There seems to be a huge resistance to paying anything other than a flat fee for internet access. Which brings us back to my point about people not understanding that bandwidth costs.

Re:And?

[Chandon Seldon]

There seems to be a huge resistance to paying anything other than a flat fee for internet access.

And yet paying per minute for cellphone usage is considered normal.

In any case, this is a campus network we're talking about, and I'm basically only suggesting charging for very high usage (the sort of thing they *might* cut a user off for "abuse" for now). The real resistance to this sort of policy is twofold: First, they don't want to deal with billing. Second, they don't want to deal with student/parent complaints after billing. Personally, I'd much rather be able to send out a bill and then say RTFM when the complaint comes in than having to cut off students and then deal with their ridiculous excuses for downloading 100 gigs in a day or whatever before turning them back on just to overuse bandwidth again.

Re:And?

[fm6]

Personally, I'd much rather be able to send out a bill and then say RTFM when the complaint comes in...

I think you'll find that "RTFM" ranks with "read the fine print" in popularity among customers.

As for cell phones, paying by the minute may be normal, but it's hardly popular. Or haven't you noticed all the ads for complicated rollover schemes, free weekends, and free calls to family members?

Re:And?

[xSauronx]

Thanks for the pointers :) Ill try and get some basic equipment and a couple old boxes i can put linux on so i can start playing around asap and get a bit familiar with things. I'm interested in networking, but not entirely certain what direction i want to go with it so getting some practical experience will benefit me in more ways than one.

So what?

[JustShootMe]

Guy had a network problem. Network admins found the source of the network problem. People who caused the network problem complained, everyone else was happy. This wasn't even a technology problem, it was an oversight in the configuration of the routers/switches.

How exactly is this worthy of a front page article on slashdot?

Hey, guess what. The other day I had a process that stopped working. Thinking quickly, I figured out what was wrong and fixed it. Everyone was happy. Do I get a front page article too?

Sheesh. Congrats for doing your job, subby.

(I know this was a journal entry and subby had nothing to do with it getting greenlighted, but seriously, wtf?)

Re:So what?

[SkySerf]

It mentions Halo 3 thats how.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is this worthy of a front page article on slashdot?

Oh, come on. You expect kdawson to read anything he green lights? That'd take work, man. I mean, it's not like he gets paid to do this or anything. Oh wait...

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, some real tech geeks rather than windows-using wannabees still read slashdot (though not typically the commments, I'm just on a day off). Some of us might want to preemptively throttle UDP to avoid similar problems as Halo takeup ramps up. Some of us might have noticed something up but not got to the bottom of the problem yet.

It's like when a motorist signals other motorists that there's an accident ahead. You know, communicating. Sharing information. The thing that sets humanity apart in degree if not in kind from other animals (at least until intellectual monopoly lawyers get involved).

Re:So what?

[JustShootMe]

I have been doing sysadmin (and sysadmin-like) work for 10 years now - and I can say that anyone who hasn't figured out where the system load is coming from and tracked it down to UDP traffic not being filtered within about an hour of noticing the problem probably should find another line of work. Either that, or hasn't been doing it very long and should seek out the assistance of someone more senior and experienced.

Not to say that you don't have a point and this might be valuable in that circumstance, but it really is a non-story for the vast majority of people who didn't just get root for the first time last week.

Re:So what?

[Climate Shill]

How exactly is this worthy of a front page article on slashdot?

The sixth Halo promotion on Slashdot this month ? I imagine it's worthy because little worth-carrying pieces of paper* changed hands.

* Or Dollars.

Re:So what?

[ClosedSource]

"Believe it or not, some real tech geeks rather than windows-using wannabees still read slashdot (though not typically the commments, I'm just on a day off). Some of us might want to preemptively throttle UDP to avoid similar problems as Halo takeup ramps up."

Sure, it's not as if Windows admins use routers or anything like that. Apparently only "real tech geeks" do (whoever they are).

Re:So what?

[JustShootMe]

Historically, windows admins are better at pointing and clicking than actually solving problems.

I have met some windows admins who are fairly competent at what they do. I also have met some who could barely figure out how to move the mouse. Aa a whole linux or unix admins tend to be much more competent than windows admins, as a whole. And as with everything, there are exceptions going both ways.

The reason is simple - the barrier to entry is much higher with unix and its variants. So once you're in that position, you've already gone through most of the trials that windows admins have never had to deal with and maybe won't for a long time.

That's also why we're generally paid more.

Re:So what?

[ClosedSource]

I'd say that in most cases UNIX admins would bumble their way through unfamiliar Windows GUIs in much the same way that Windows admins would bumble their way through unfamiliar console commands.

But my original post was mocking the idea that only non-Windows admins would care about routers. That wasn't your point (unless you were the AC), but it was his.

Re:So what?

[jkerman]

I actually clicked through expecting a great discussion and determine if it was an actual global issue, or just something isolated to that network.

sure sure "it aint the good ol days" of slashdot, thats for sure. But the discussion, if true, could have tremendous value. There is no other forum I am aware of that such a wide variety of geeks frequent, and to its credit, the discussion did answer the question. Since it was "no" it sort of seems like a waste. but it /could/ have been interesting!

worth a shot sometimes

Re:So what?

[Chandon Seldon]

Guy had a network problem. Network admins found the source of the network problem. People who caused the network problem complained, everyone else was happy.

School had a misconfigured network and a capacity shortage. Network admins broke a commonly used application in response rather than either buying more capacity or properly configuring their network.

This is old news for those of us who use P2P protocals for file downloads. The news here is that the "most usage is probably illegal anyway" excuse for degrading specific applications is just an excuse - they'll happily come up with other excuses when that one doesn't fit for the application they want to break.

Re:So what?

[TummyX]

Hey, guess what. The other day I had a process that stopped working. Thinking quickly, I figured out what was wrong and fixed it. Everyone was happy. Do I get a front page article too?


Yes. If you were running Vista.

Re:So what?

[smash]

The difference is that a unix admin "bumbling through the windows gui" will actually know wtf they are configuring. Sure, he might find locating a particular option in the GUI a bit tricky (but that's what the online help is for), but he will more likely actually know which options should be selected rather than just leaving a whole heap of possibly insecure "cover all bases" defaults ticked.

As a unix admin to configure a windows server and you'll get far better results than getting your typical windows "admin" to attempt to try configure a Linux server.

Re:So what?

[weicco]

But that's impossible since everybody here knows that you CAN'T FIX ANYTHING IF YOU ARE RUNNING VISTA and that only way to solve the problem is to upgrade to XP. Also Vista kills kittens.

Hey! Could we have article how Vista kills kittens?

Re:So what?

[ClosedSource]

You're assuming that knowing UNIX somehow means you automatically know about how to configure network equipment in a way that Windows Admins would not. There's no connection.

Re:So what?

[smash]

I think you'll find there's a pretty strong correlation.

Re:So what?

[ClosedSource]

If you presented some evidence you'd be more convincing. It sounds more like a bias to me.

Re:So what?

[smash]

Look, go out there, get some real world industry experience (i have 12 years) and get back to me if you don't believe it.

Re:So what?

[ClosedSource]

Sorry to disappoint you, kid, but I have twice as many years experience as you. Of course, you and I could have a 100 years experience and still have a baised opinion.

you are an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to piss of gamers. Porn and gaming made the internet. Now you are sucking the very life out of it. All that will be left is eggheads like you who get off on power tripping.

Re:you are an asshole

[Red Flayer]

Porn and gaming made the internet.

Your tax dollars, via defense spending, created the internet. If you choose to use it for gaming and porn, that's your perogative -- but especially in a place of learning (a university) recreational usage should play second fiddle. You don't like it? Live at home in Mom's basement like all the other cave-dwelling trolls, where the only one 'throttling your bandwidth' will be you or your Mom.

Whew. That said, you might be able to make a Neocon's head asplode if you tell him that defense spending leads to a massive worldwide increase in porn viewing and production.

Re:you are an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

WOOOSSSHHH!!!!

Re:you are an asshole

[Tuoqui]

They might not be able to play Halo 3 but they can still get as much porn as they want.

Re:you are an asshole

[fender177]

We didn't disable it, merely limited it. A university network is first and foremost an educational network, not a network for games. You, my half witted friend, are the anonymously posting, asshole.

Re:you are an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the network should be used for whatever the CUSTOMERS who are paying to attend and use your educational facility for want to use it for. I doubt the university is hurting for cash, considering the amount students pay for tuition.

Re:you are an asshole

[BryGross]

For what I bet you are paying to live in that dorm, the networks capacity should be able to handle both purposes. You shouldn't have to choose one or the other.

No sympathy...

[_Shad0w_]

You know, I don't think I have any sympathy for the upset gamers on campus networks.

Also, are you seriously trying to tell me that /. couldn't find something more interesting to post?

Re:No sympathy...

[JustShootMe]

Here's how I imagine it going down.

On the slashdot administrative interface, the entry for "Jack Thompson sent gay porn to the American Family ASSociation and told James Dobson's family that he was a sinner" was right above this entry. The slashdot editor's mother yelled "Cookies are ready!" and while the editor yelled "But mooooooooooooooooom! We're in the MAN CAVE! Sheesh!" his finger slipped and guess what...

Moral of the story - make sure you get mom's cookies BEFORE editing slashdot!

Re:No sympathy...

[damn_registrars]

Sadly enough, I know someone who chose his 4 year college based on ping times to his favorite Quake servers...

You'll probably be shocked to hear that he graduated by some sort of formality...

Re:No sympathy...

[timeOday]

You know, I don't think I have any sympathy for the upset gamers on campus networks.

I don't know about sympathy, but it does sound like the university network is inadequate. I'd hate to see these admins in charge at FedEx... "there's just too darn many packages this Christmas, and most of them aren't important business documents anyways. I know, let's just throw out anything in wrapping paper and ribbons!"

Re:No sympathy...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. kdawson was looking for Halo3 cheat codes in Slashdot journals and stumbled on this.
2. kdawson thinks everyone is playing Halo3 and wasting time on that when they could be submitting political stories with preferred lean for him to post and he is dropping a hint that he wants more submissions.
3. kdawson thinks SourceForge is having the same problem or he got tired of getting shot by Taco and is looking for an excuse.
***

Re:No sympathy...

[petermgreen]

the difference is with FedEx you pay per package and expect a high quality of service for that payment. With a dorm network you get provided service primerally for educational reasons and other use while allowed but it is not a priority.

what I do think is wrong though is denying students the ability to purchase internet service from elsewhere if they aren't happy with the uni's freeby.

So, that's why I got gibbed!

[jollyreaper]

You insensitive bastard!

slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

must be...

Good for you?

[Mattwolf7]

I fail to see a story here, your network was setup wrong and is now fixed. Case closed.

Re:Good for you?

[MikeBabcock]

I'd actually like to see the measurements on actual total bandwidth usage by gamers on a per-user basis. Are we talking about a few kilobytes per second, or hundreds?

MY GOD!!

[BillOfThePecosKind]

Has the world finally succumb to this madness!?! When will the injustice to gamers be put to an end!?!

There is no way this is possibly true

[Anonymous Coward]

and wow, I am increasingly glad I've never created an account on slashdot in the last 2 years

Oh please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a better network! Online gaming isn't that bandwidth intensive!

"shaping" network packets....?

[Anonymous Coward]

gosh don't you mean your gimp ass network had to throttle traffic because you're either too poor or you're too lazy to upgrade your network's 1980 infrastructure?

why stop there? make to to throttle youtube, video conferencing and other bandwidth heavy applications. hell why not just disallow everything but gopher?

This is not the real reason

[mynickwastaken]

Look here

Oh... Sorry... It is 2005. Errm... And is not 25th of september...

Oops! Is not SUN is The Sun

Oops! And is not US is UK

Hmm! Who cares anyway. We are on Slashdot isnt't it?

What is "shaping"?

[Anonymous Coward]

hah?

My school's network sucks :/

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose all this tells the administrators is they either a) need to upgrade their networking hardware, or b) need to get a fatter pipe to the internet.

My school just spent over $2 million on a network upgrade, and while that's all good and dandy, the network still sucks. We have a 45Mb pipe for the WHOLE school (Small school, only 2000 kids, but still... we're maxing that out 80% of every day)... And a lot of the dorm buildings only have Cat 3 ethernet cabling, and are thus limited to 10Mb/s ethernet connections (So even local connections suck)...

In any case, playing xbox live on our network is a chore to say the least... It only even connects half the time, and when it does it's NAT'd to all hell (even though every device on our network has its own external IP)... And it likes to drop out a lot too. I have a feeling everything registered as a gaming device (We use Bradford Networks' "Network Access Control") gets QOS'd down to the bottom of the pile automagically. And they shape everything that isn't port 80 too (which sucks, because normal internet traffic, which most people wouldn't even notice being a little slower, ends up using almost all of our bandwidth).

So, I guess what I'm saying is... Schools (mine in particular) need more bandwidth!

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a similar situation at my school. Based on my signal strength in most areas, I think they only have 1 ap per building.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Bert64]

Your 45mb pipe, even shared between 2000 users is a lot more than people had a few years ago... Consider dialups, and the college where i studied had 2mb shared between around 2000 students.
But you need to consider the usage patterns, most ISPs will put way more than 2000 users on a single 45mb pipe, because the average user uses very little bandwidth. Your school clearly has a higher proportion of heavy users, and so it's bandwidth is more saturated.
Do remember that this is a SCHOOL... It's purpose is to educate the kids, not to facilitate them playing games. They really have no obligation to support any use of the internet other than legitimate educational purposes.
They could quite easily filter everything except HTTP, and require that you make and justify a request, via a teacher, for anything else.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Bert64]

Well if it's a dorm room, get a high gain antenna and hang it out the window, or find where the AP is located and point a directional antenna at it...

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Kwami]

Actually, I know of at least one school that DOES block everything but HTTP. Well, sort of. They actually block every port except for port 80. Even then, some protocols are blocked (like AIM). I've had quite the adventure these past eight weeks trying to get around the limitations. Fortunately, some awesome people started up http://www.meebo.com/ for my IM needs, and Gentoo includes emerge-webrsync as an alternative to emerge --sync. Still, it's terribly annoying. If my home university did the same, I'd seriously consider moving off-campus. Students pay a large sum of money to live in the dorms and apartments provided by the University (~$6k/year). Part of that money goes toward funding the Internet connection. At the moment, the only type of traffic that they throttle is streaming video. That's enough. I don't need my games throttled, too.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Xemu]

Do remember that this is a SCHOOL... It's purpose is to educate the kids, not to facilitate them playing games

Humans have educated others through games since forever. Even chess is a strategy game meant to teach others about warfare. The military uses games even today to train soldiers how to behave in combat.

Schools would be better if they used more games to educate their students.

A smart professor could use Halo3 to teach about gender issues or the biology of human perception.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[EvanED]

Do remember that this is a SCHOOL... It's purpose is to educate the kids, not to facilitate them playing games.

I disagree with this, at least to some extent. I agree that education is primary, but don't forget that it's also a HOME for those living on campus. You can't do nothing but eat, sleep, and study.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Atlantis-Rising]

This really depends on your school. When I went to school, the school's IT department acted solely as our ISP- they restricted us to our bandwidth (10 GB/week when I was there a few years ago, 20 GB/week now), but beyond that, you were free to use as much of the pipe as you could drink from. (Admittedly, it was a 300 Mbps pipe shared between 2100 users, but the link to your jack was only 100 Mbps, so.) The other advantage, however, was that data on the University's internal network was entirely uncapped (and essentially unlimited in bandwidth; buildings were connected by 10 Gbps fibre links, and they had a 700 Mbps pipe to other educational networks) and so all the actual 'school' work you had to do you could do with no real trouble, even if the outgoing network pipe was totally saturated.

However, my point was not to blather on about infrastructure.

Some schools provide internet access as a privilege, and there, they have no obligation to support any use of the internet they don't want to. All the schools I've gone to have charged you for it, and acted solely as an ISP. They had no right, nor did they claim to, to restrict or limit your use of the bandwidth you had contractually paid for.

I know, for example, the University of Edinburgh at one point basically restricted you to port 80 through a Squid proxy, which would have made me enormously unhappy had I gone to school there. Luckily, I did not.

(Quite a bit of the time, I long for my school's internet connection. A 300 Mbps external internet pipe, a 10 Gbps internal network backbone, and an average of ~4 ms latency to the nearest sections of the internet cloud with an average maximum of 2 ms to anywhere on the school's internal network. I just wish they'd upgraded the in-room connections to gigabit before I'd left, although I realize it was a purposeful decision on their part- by leaving it at 100 Mbps, it was technically impossible for one person to saturate any of the network links.)

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[TooMuchToDo]

Have your admins take a look at putting some Cogent bandwidth into the mix. Some will say it's crap, but I've found it to be excellent. You can get a 100Mb pipe extremely cheap from them.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do remember that this is a SCHOOL... It's purpose is to educate the kids

If so, perhaps it'll find something better to teach them than your "block everything" idea? "At School we learned where and how the biggest c**ts work".

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[fishbowl]

>Do remember that this is a SCHOOL... It's purpose is to educate the kids, not to facilitate them playing games.

What kids? You have to be 18 to live in that dorm.
And it's not strictly *School*, it's a residence. Do you think it would be acceptable to only provide electric light for those who are actually studying? Or to only allow people to leave to go to class or to the library but for no other reason?

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Bert64]

They do only provide electric, and accomodation, to those studying.
When you cease to be a student, you have to move out.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Anonymous Coward]

You think your school has bandwidth problems? My school has over 23,000 students on a 622Mb/s pipe. Of course that's just the connection to the state educational network. The actual internet connection is less then 200Mb/s. (The max utilization of that 622Mb/s pipe over the last year was 262Mb/s)

So, your school has about 2x the effective bandwidth per student as my school does. Yes, all our dorms are wired with cat3. My bandwidth is rate limited to 768kb/s, so it doesn't matter.

Some people were saying to move out of the dorms: My school requires all freshmen to live in the dorms for at least one year.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Anonymous Coward]

Except then when they got around to trying to attract new students they'd have a bit of trouble saying "internet access" was part of the price.

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Frumious Wombat]

You didn't go to U. of Chicago, did you?

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[illumin8]

They could quite easily filter everything except HTTP, and require that you make and justify a request, via a teacher, for anything else.

Now announcing, Halo 4, featuring the latest in XML over HTTP client/server gaming!

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[Anonymous Coward]

Schools would be better if they used more games to educate their students.

A smart professor could use Halo3 to teach about gender issues or the biology of human perception.

That trite point would take several seconds of the professor's time, what would they talk about for the rest of the semester? Honestly if my college professors had tried to tie their non-computer lessons into Halo, I would have stood up and left.

Jesus, don't you fucking nerds get enough computer games and science fiction movies at home?

Re:My school's network sucks :/

[bigdavex]

Even chess is a strategy game meant to teach others about warfare.

I think chess is too abstract to teach lessons about the strategy warfare. Maybe something like, the lords don't care about you if you're a pawn.

UDP

[maxrate]

U Don't Play packets

Re:UDP

[ScrewMaster]

I think UDP stands for "University-Dropped Packets".

kdawson story

[mariushm]

Someone tag this kdawson... In other words, what kind of network are those people using that a game crashes it? With hubs and bridged computers...

Wait a second.

[Entropius]

You're degrading time-critical but relatively low-bandwidth traffic intentionally in order to improve responsiveness for some ssh connections?

Granted, Halo 3 is less important than Prof. Smith's Monte Carlo, but the fact that you have to do this at all means that you need more capacity. Plus it's damn rude to the students: "Oh, they're doing something new that we don't degrade! Ah, well, just degrade student UDP traffic too, that'll fix it!"

I'm not saying that transfer limits are a bad idea -- someone downloading 100GB/month and saturating a line needs to be told off, certainly -- but if a bunch of low-bandwidth gaming traffic from the dorms kills the network...

Don't forget that those guys in the dorms playing Halo pay lots of money to the university, which pays for the network.

If I knew what uni you were at I'd seriously consider adding my (meager) 256kbps upstream to the load by writing a script to refresh your homepage over and over.

Re:Wait a second.

[JustShootMe]

You are a jerk.

The college network resources are there, first and foremost, to facilitate learning. Unless you're going to make the argument that their hand-eye coordination will increase their reproductive ability later by actually being able to find the proper part of their girlfriend to insert certain parts of themselves in in the future when they actually have a girlfriend and a life, you really haven't a leg to stand on.

Your last comment belies your true mindset - you're just a common cracker who things that you have a god given right to do anything you want with someone else's network.

Re:Wait a second.

[Bert64]

But this is a university network... Accessing SSH on university systems so that students can do their work is far more important than playing some games.
The network is there for research purposes, so thats students can do the research they need to pass their educational courses. Any traffic that facilitates the educational courses of the university should be prioritised, and anything else should get whatever bandwidth remains. And those games should be grateful they can play online games at all, the university is not obligated to provide them a connection nor allow them to play games on it (they could easily filter gaming traffic completely).

Re:Wait a second.

[MacTO]

Don't forget that those guys in the dorms playing Halo pay lots of money to the university, which pays for the network. Students are paying for an education, and maybe room and board. It is absurd to think that universities should be giving students free reign to academic resources for gaming. Particularly if their use is degrading the availability of those resources for their intended purposes. If you want a low latency connection for gaming, then buy your own and don't force others to subsidise your entertainment. Thing is, very few gamers will do that because they know that the minute they use a real ISP is the minute that they have to pay for how they use it. And most students would rather just bitch and freeload.

Re:Wait a second.

[JustShootMe]

Exactly. Welcome to the real world, or as close to it as you can get in an academic setting.

Try setting up a halo 3 server at your job once you graduate, and see how fast they shut it down. I know, apples and oranges in some ways, but in both cases the network is there for a specific purpose.

Re:Wait a second.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not freeloading. They are paying for it.

It's all academic anyway - anyone who goes to university is just too stupid to teach themselves.

Re:Wait a second.

[JustShootMe]

AC, the first part of your comment is somewhat insightful. However, I'd point out that while they are paying for it, they probably had to agree to a TOS that they signed before having the service to their room turned on. Because of that, while it's not freeloading, they are paying for their service SUBJECT TO THE TOS, which probably states that the University has an absolute right to do anything at their discretion to ensure the integrity of their systems and networks, up to and including termination of service.

The last part of your comment however I think is flagrantly ignorant. That little piece of paper can mean a huge different in how much you are paid once you graduate. Is that fair? No, but it is not stupid to go to college. The stupid part is to rely on your college education to make you an outstanding member of whatever field you are in. College is just a tool to help shape what is already there. If you go there with a mind of jelly, college will not turn that mind of jelly into a finely honed tool of leetness.

It, as with everything else in life, is exactly what you make it and no more.

Re:Wait a second.

[mschuyler]

If it's the university network, they are only paying for part of it. In a state school tuition covers what? 15-25% of the actual cost. In a private school the percentage is a lot more, but nowhere near 100%. The rest is endowments and contributions. So the bottom line is that the taxpayers are paying something like 75-80% of the cost to send Joe Gamer to a state school.

In other words I'm paying to send you to school. I don't want my taxes used to expand a school network to accommodate gamers. I certainly do not expect students to study 100%, but I strongly suspect an increase in network traffic in the night hours represents many thousands of wasted hours not spent on learning your topic. If you don't like it, get your own network and pay the full cost.

Re:Wait a second.

[Anonymous Coward]

And those games should be grateful they can play online games at all, the university is not obligated to provide them a connection nor allow them to play games on it (they could easily filter gaming traffic completely).

And the university should be grateful that the students chose to go there and not to the many high-quality competitors available around the country.

As in most things, it is a give-and-take. The university is not obligated to provide this service but if they did not provide it they would have a massive loss of students. The students have no reason to expect the university must carry this traffic, but they have every reason to get upset if they suddenly decide to degrade it.

Re:Wait a second.

[arcsimm]

The network is there for research purposes, so thats students can do the research they need to pass their educational courses. Any traffic that facilitates the educational courses of the university should be prioritised, and anything else should get whatever bandwidth remains.

Though the article author doesn't say what university he's from, if the students there pay any kind of significant connection fee for Internet access this argument won't fly. Where I attend, I pay roughly $25 a month -- what a decent midrange residential DSL package costs -- to be able to access the Internet in my dorm room. Above and beyond that, all on-campus intranet services are available regardless of whether or not that fee is paid, including our Blackboard site and libraries. If I'm going to pay that much for what is solely an Internet connection, I expect to be able to damn well whatever I like with it (though the administrators appear to disagree when they blame the perpetually abysmal service on "non-academic use"), and so should the students who are getting their games throttled down to unplayability.

Re:Wait a second.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the fact that games are math, art, science, programming, process, strategy? Research the math, do the gaming and learn. Lots of folks go to school to learn how their games actually work. Take away their inspiration and it's like yanking the carpet out from under their feet.

I JUST POOPED A LARGE TURD

[Anonymous Coward]

It had a satisfying sweet smell and was flecked with little seeds from my multigrain healthy bread.

UPDATES TO FOLLOW AS EVENTS WARRANT STAY TUNED

Re:I JUST POOPED A LARGE TURD

[JustShootMe]

Congratulations. Put it in a journal and you might get on the front page too.

Re:I JUST POOPED A LARGE TURD

[Anonymous Coward]

I EMAILED Robin Maldar to tell him about the news multiple times -- for an editor of a so-called "news" site he seems disturbingly unconcerned with what may very well be the STORY OF THE CENTURY.

ghey

[pak9rabid]

How hard is it to run a tcpdump (or IOS's equivalent) on a core router to see what type of traffic is saturating the network? And why the fuck is there a need to post this on /. like it's a big deal?

Re:ghey

[phantomcircuit]

How hard is it to run a tcpdump (or IOS's equivalent) on a core router to see what type of traffic is saturating the network? And why the fuck is there a need to post this on /. like it's a big deal?
Because it was UDP traffic?!

Re:ghey

[pak9rabid]

You can dump udp traffic via tcpdump yo....tcpdump is just it's name, not a limitation. You can dump any type of Layer 3 traffic with it.

Re:ghey

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco routers or Juniper routers do not have a dump option, that is what span and tcpdump (or any sniffer) is for. You don't want to run a capture program running on your core when you already have saturation problems.

Re:ghey

[pak9rabid]

Well, maybe not their routers, but I've definately know you can achieve this on the PIX and ASA firewalls, as I've done it before. Basically you set up an access-list specifying the type of traffic you want to monitor. You then use your newly created access-list in conjunction with a capture statement to dump the packets in question. So, if you wanted to dump all port 80 traffic for example, you could do it this way:

# access-list dump extended permit 80 any any
# capture capl access-list dump interface inside

After you wait enough time for the capture to be populated with information, you can display it like this

# show capture capl

Granted, this isn't something you'd want to do on an already bogged down firewall/router, but if you don't have any other choice, it can be very helpful in troubleshooting network issues.

Re:ghey

[Slashcrap]

How hard is it to run a tcpdump (or IOS's equivalent) on a core router to see what type of traffic is saturating the network?

It's very easy indeed to run these sort of debug commands on Cisco routers.

However, running them without crashing the router tends to take slightly more expertise. I highly recommend that anyone reading this who has access to a production Cisco router try running the "debug all" command. Mainly because I'm currently looking for a job and it would be good if a few vacancies suddenly opened up.

Re:ghey

[phantomcircuit]

yeah i know i just couldn't help but poke fun at the poorly named program.

Oh! Boo hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe the number of people defending the student's desire to play Halo and clipling the network. Sure, the network might be improperly configured, but they are using someone else resource at the expense of others. Personally, I would have closed the ports used by the game.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[JustShootMe]

I wouldn't have gone that far. I think that what the poster did was a reasonable action. But I wouldn't have thought twice about closing the ports if the situation had warranted it.

Gaming may be a fun thing to do, but it is not a god-given right, especially at a University where you are supposed to be, oh, I don't know, going to classes and doing homework?

Maybe I'm just a 32 year old fart that remembers the university days when people studied or went to the student union if they wanted to interact with people.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they play Halo doesn't mean they don't study or do homework. Their tuition also pays for that infrastructure. Should the university tell them how to use the internet they pay for? Maybe all universities should just start censoring the internet and call it a day.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[JustShootMe]

Well, most ISPs do that already in one way or another anyway, and sometimes they won't even bother telling you what the policy is, even after you've violated it. Kids these days have it good.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[v1]

"They are using someone else's resources..." that they paid for. They are getting their money's worth. Now if going to university was free...

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[JustShootMe]

...and had to sign a TOS agreement before receiving the service, most likely.

Just because you pay for the use of something doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want with it. Try turning your rented apartment into a brothel and see how far you get with that.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[v1]

.. which is usually of one of two variety. First type is 10 pages of useless noise and one important line buried in the middle somewhere that says "OR, we will do as we please and you surrender all your rights", or it uses wording so wide as to be capable of getting you suspended for running Hello World one too many times which leaves it at the descretion of the person enforcing the rules to decide on a case by case basis who broke the rules. (meaning, whoever they choose...)

TOS should be illegal. If I buy a product or service from you, you should not be able to tell me how I'm allowed to use it. The law can tell me how NOT to use it, but you have no business telling me how I CAN use it. If you're unhappy with it then why did you so willingly take my money? How about I put a TOS on the money I give you? No, you can't spend it on that, because I don't want that. Now isn't that just stupid?

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did people go to the student union when you're meant to be going to classes and doing homework?

Oh I see, you're just judging people by YOUR standards and what you like to do in your spare time and suggesting that EVERYONE should only do the things you you want to do and nothing else when at Uni.

People still study, they just like doing the things they enjoy in their spare time, god forbid that's not always about going out spending money on alcohol.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[JustShootMe]

I don't believe a TOS should be illegal. In fact, I'm all for TOSes. I don't have a problem with them, not even a little bit, unless it is for something that is absolutely essential for you to live. If you do not like having to live under a TOS, there is nothing at all stopping you from laying your own fiber, from setting up your own POPs across the country, and setting up your own network from point to point. Then you get to set the terms, and you can do it without TOS if you want to. But, then, anyone who pays you for the service (which will be pretty much anyone you want to connect with, because if you peer with someone, guess what, you have to abide by their TOS) will be able to do whatever the hell they want and you'll have a hell of a time turning them off. After all, they don't have TOSes and they're paying for the service, right?

TOSes are one of the natural consequences of living in a litigious society. If you don't like it, then figure out how to stop people from suing over every little thing, and they'll just go away.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[JustShootMe]

You could do homework at the student union, einstein.

They even had comfy chairs.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[Tuoqui]

Problem is lots of TOS's read something similar to EULA's... Full of Legalese and verbose crap that noone in their right minds would subject their brains to if they didnt need to.

Now if EULA's and TOS's were written in plain english using understandable terms then maybe people would read them.

We may live in a litigious society but that does not mean we need to stand for having legalese everywhere in 6 point font so people wont read it for any number of reasons up to and including being partially blind.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[JustShootMe]

That's not complaining about TOS, that's complaining about BAD TOSes. Big difference there.

There are some TOSes that need to be taken out and shot, but that doesn't mean all TOSes are bad.

Re:Oh! Boo hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the issue here is that the students abused the capacity of the network in a way that impacted other non-halo-er who might have been trying to get their homework done. Sure, a tuition was paid for the network, but it was paid equally by all students, and thus should be shared equally. Why should your desire to abuse that resource be respected?

Slashdot is now twitter! How innovative!

[Anonymous Coward]

My computer was acting a little slowly. I didn't want to figure out what exactly was causing the problem, so I rebooted it. It's back to normal speed now.

But why is it a choice?

[Workaphobia]

The part I don't understand is how it's a choice between real-time apps and other traffic. Somehow, on my university's network, we're able to play first-person shooters without causing any performance issues for other users or feeling more limited than if we were on a home connection. Do we have more bandwidth than the submitter's university? We've got a gigabit/s connection between buildings, and 10 megabit/s per switch port (which I despise, as it means I can't get 100 mb/s speed within the campus network, but it makes their QoS easier).

Crazy?

[spykemail]

Wait a minute, you limited network usage for gamers in favor of academic users? Sounds like a pretty shitty school if you ask me. Everyone knows that school networks are for three things:

1) Downloading music and movies illegally.
2) Downloading pr0n.
3) Playing games, even crappy ones like Halo 3.

As you can clearly see homework and research are not on the list...

You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently at my university where I'm a student and a sys admin ...

Looks like the uni got what they paid for. Heck, I'd be willing to bet the subby was about to post this as an "Ask Slashdot" question.

Re:You get what you pay for

[JustShootMe]

Good point. Only an inexperienced system or network admin would think that this was a challenging problem worthy of putting in a journal for all to see as an example of performance above and beyond the call of duty.

Re:You get what you pay for

[fender177]

i thought it was funny that people playing halo 3 could bring a network to it's knees, worth sharing for others to have a good laugh. It's my second week at this job -- my department isn't in control of the network outside of our building, but we work closely with those who are, which is how I found out about the issue. We don't have a huge budget for our network, we're a state funded school with 30,000+ students. The oversight in shaping the UDP packets was a big oversight, which caused issues for nearly a week. Many students had issues getting into the servers to do their homework, and professors had issues checking their email. The issue went right up the line. We have a couple of T1 lines coming in. Users connecting in remotely using time warner were experiencing the issues. The students in the dorms playing the new game were going using the dorms T1, which is also through by Time Warner. The servers experiencing the issues use a different T1 through a different ISP. It was only the remote users subscribing to Time Warner's high speed internet that had the remote issues. Students within the network had no known issues.

Re:You get what you pay for

[JustShootMe]

Thanks for commenting.

Personally, I don't think it's funny or not funny, I just think it's an example of finding a problem and solving it. Personally I think FPS games are a pox on almost every network and I stay as far away from them as I can. If I had to acribe any adjective to this, I'd say "expected".

On the flip side, I am not all that happy with kdawson for posting such a journal entry, and I recognize that you did nothing wrong in any case here. kdawson really did you a disservice with frontpaging this.

Re:You get what you pay for

[dbIII]

Perhaps they just thought it was funny. A new game is released and suddenly there's huge amounts of UDP traffic showing a lot of people on their network got the game.

Sysadmin does job

[winkydink]

No film at 11.

Good grief! What a ridiculous article.

bad summary

[sound vision]

I'm sot sure what's going on here - who's peeking at your gaming hours?

Ok, that's it!

[andr0meda]

"Halo 3" should be arrested immediately, brought to justice and then executed. And his bastard parrents too, for naming their kid "Halo 3" in the first place, I mean come on!

wait a min..

Ah, Doom

[Dachannien]

Way back in the day, Doom's first implementation of multiplayer used broadcast packets to communicate amongst client machines. The university I attended was, at the time, home to the world's largest unswitched Ethernet. Doom's popularity led to the swift collapse of the entire network on a regular basis, since a broadcast packet would result in a response from every other machine on the network.

id shortly thereafter patched the game not to use broadcast packets anymore. Once the cause of the network failures became apparent, playing the unpatched version of Doom became grounds for having your Intargopher turned off (we didn't call it the Intarweb back in those days, ya whippersnapper).

Re:Ah, Doom

[SebaSOFT]

I second that, dude... What's with the "Halo 3 causing network issues". The SysAdmins were lame and anything could cause that network issue. I can't believe that this will add to the most outstanding fake ovation ever made, for a game that's not even that cool. If you want a good singleplayer experience get a copy of The Darkness or Bioshock, if you want a good multiplayer experience wait for COD 4 or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but stop filling your mouths with this stup1d game.

umm

[Stu Charlton]

I don't think he was being a jerk.

Students aren't going to learn much if you provide shoddy essential services to people living on campus. They're going to want to watch TV, play games, etc.

Now, if it's possible to order 3rd party networks such as Hi-Speed Cable or DSL, there at least is an outlet. I recall on my dorm (many) years ago a difficult time getting access to 3rd party networks, hence why the university's network was used.

I'll also note that some on-campus residences are a source of income for the university (i.e. they're not run at a loss), and actually advertise access to high speed Internet as a feature to entice them to stay on campus vs. scramble to off-campus housing. Some even require at least 1-2 years of on campus stay. If I've been spending most of my high school years with high speed access and now am forced to deal with degraded service, I would not be pleased.

Re:umm

[JustShootMe]

I think he was, if only because of the last comment, where he said that if he found out where the guy worked he would do a "poor man's DOS attack" on his webpage.

That shows a particular lack of respect for the resources of others, reinforced by the rest of his comment.

It is true that it may be your only source for high speed internet. It also may be true that it's a sign of degraded internet. But gaming is a privilege, not a right, particularly at a university, and even if it got entirely turned off, there's no harm in going out and meeting other people in... *gasp*... the big blue room.

Re:umm

[cheesegoduk]

oh give it a rest, The Internet is just as useful for doing non work related stuff and students in there own time shouldn't be forced to suffer, especially when the uni advertises themselves has having fast Internet connections in halls when its really just a lie. Students who enjoy online gaming may pick a location to live based on having decent Internet, just the same as someone who enjoys any other hobby will take it into account when picking somewhere to live. And no, Students are allowed to have some free time other than being forced to work 24/7. The uni should buy in extra bandwidth or stop advertising as such.

Also, get over using that "Deal with it and go outside" crap, Its so cliche its not funny. Accept that different people enjoy different pastimes and interests and move on. Not everything thinks uni is about going down random pubs and getting hammered with people you couldn't give a shit about. They don't want to be forced to go outside just because some asshat decided it'd be fun to turn off the Internet connection because he thought they shouldn't sit inside all day.

Re:umm

[JustShootMe]

Dude, if you knew me, you'd probably find me saying "deal with it and go outside" to be hilarious.

Let's just say it's advice I find much better to give than follow.

Re:umm

[macshit]

oh give it a rest, The Internet is just as useful for doing non work related stuff and students in there own time shouldn't be forced to suffer,

"Suffer."

Because someone rate-limited your halo 3 connection (to avoid network outages).

The mind boggles...

It's not the students fault ...

[ThirdPrize]

it is the Covenants fault. They are trying to crash the internet ready for the next invasion.

My school

[Beowulf_Boy]

My school has a game design major, that I'm a part of.

The internet in the dorms was shittacular. Horrible horrible service, and we had to pay 30$ a month for it.
And, the IT department, when called out on this bullshit, couldn't even give us a break down on how our money was being spent.

So, 3 years ago me and several friends sent an email out to everyone of importance around campus calling them out, basically saying it was bullcrap they advertise themselves as being all advanced at this university and having this gaming major, but the gaming major students can't even get online half the time in their dorms to play....games.

Within several hours, most faculty was writing back and agreeing with us. We showed up at a meeting, and the head of IT didn't have anything together at all.

Basically what happened was for a few months we could opt to be on a seperate network through the engineering department that wasn't managed by the IT department, but rather a professor in his spare time. And gasp, this network was far far superior and less buggy. It had 50% of the computers on campus on it, and 0% of the budget, yet still managed to be far more reliable.

Then, after the next quarter passed, we were allowed to get outside ISP service in the dorms. Alot of my friends get adelphia internet access. I just chose to move off campus, I was tired of dealing with it. You still had to pay the IT department for their crummy connection, on top of paying another ISP.

Re:My school

[JustShootMe]

If you're getting truly abyssmal service like that, then I laud your ability to go around it and get service that meets basic standards of reliability. No one says that just because it's the university's network, it's well run. Sometimes you have to raise a fuss.

I just don't think that gaming is one of those things that universities need to bend over backwards to support.

Re:My school

[Beowulf_Boy]

It is if they have a major based around it.
Not to say they should give it precedence over internet in the library, but on nights and weekends...

Re:My school

[Racemaniac]

dunno, if they're the one providing internet access to the students, and the fact is that students can't be expected to be studying 24/7, it's imo reasonable to make the network good enough to allow casual gaming. allow the students some fun! going to a university is already costing a lot of money, and you're there most of the week, so why isn't it reasonable to expect that the internet can also be used for non educational purposes? this is not like the network of some highschool, where kids are only when they get lessons, and can go home every night to game on their own pc's and their own connections...

Re:My school

[Blakey Rat]

I just don't think that gaming is one of those things that universities need to bend over backwards to support.

The thrust of his argument is that since the school has a course in video game design/coding/whatever, students actually need to play games. I mean, if the school had a course in cinema and outlawed renting videos from Blockbuster, would you think that makes sense?

TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, man.

Re:TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[Nicholas Evans]

I must agree with this Coward. Some random university's network didn't have traffic shaping set up correctly. So? This is somehow newsworthy?

Re:TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[Hal_Porter]

I must agree with this Coward

Careful dude, some ACs are Klingons and would KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND for saying that.

Some random university's network didn't have traffic shaping set up correctly. So? This is somehow newsworthy?

It's revenge. In the good old days slashdot reading admins could get a unlimited network connection and download torrents 24/7. Then undocumented download came in and they had to limit themselves to 90GB less a hard to determine safety margin. Some ISPs did shaping too, so unfavoured applications like torrents got crippled. This spoiled their fun.

Then Halo 3 came out and they see loads of people having fun playing it. But Halo is released by Microsoft and so must have a downside. And sure enough it does - the network has been slow recently and it therefore must be to blame. The solution is to cripple its network connection. The fact their users with XBox 360s got a taste of disappointment the admins felt when Comcase limited their downloads is an added bonus.

It's a bit like when Vista came out, some Linux sysadmin decided not to support the deprecated feature of DHCP it relied on, with the happy side effect of not allowing customers to use Vista.

The really funny thing is that whenever anything Microsoft does anything that in anyway stops people using Linux the people that do this sort of thing would be outraged.

Re:TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[yahooadam]

Microsoft implement a depreciated standard and people start complaining that its not supported ?
Go try and play your DirectX 3 Games and get back to us

Re:TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[Some_Llama]

"Microsoft implement a depreciated standard and people start complaining that its not supported ?"

Depreciated? Id software changed over to UDP with quake3 and has done that ever since because it uses less bandwidth.. I think UDP is the norm for most if not all internet multiplayer games nowadays...

Re:TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[yahooadam]

I was talking about the part of DHCP, not UDP

Master Chief inappropriate touching?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to mention it but Master Chief keeps making inappropriate touching.

I think it is totally OK to be gay but I am only 9 years old. After I explained about my age, Master Chief seemed to get real excited and now I can't seem to get rid of him.

I know this is off-topic.

Little Ed

Its a Journal Entry

[mobilesteve]

Journal written by fender177 (1125877) and posted by kdawson on Sunday September 30, @03:17PM

I don't think this article was submitted as a story by the author. It looks like fender117 just posted a little story in his slashdot story, and kdawson stumbled upon it and decided to post it to the front page for some stupid reason.

Re:Its a Journal Entry

[JustShootMe]

Yup. I don't think anyone truly holds the journal entry against the poster. It's a fairly routine example of someone doing their job.

This is the kind of thing kdawson routinely posts? Ahh, the Jon Katz of the 21st century.

(I actually liked Jon, but he was one of the most hated editors of all time)

Re:Its a Journal Entry

[cyber-vandal]

I quite liked him too, I could never really understand all the hate. Is there a JonKatz fanclub I can join? :P

Re:Its a Journal Entry

[toolie]

Because kdawson is an absolute douchebag that doesn't let little things like 'the truth' or 'integrity' get in the way of bashing Microsoft.

Re:Its a Journal Entry

[paintballer1087]

*kdawson* 1. read fender177's journal 2. submit story to front page because anti-microsoft is automatic +5 3. ??? 4. ??? 5. Profit!!!

I miss Jon Katz too. Time for JabberKatz(tm)!

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to fire up the ol' JabberKatz(tm) proggie.

I miss his sensational writing style. He turned mountains into mole hills, and geeks into wise sages. I kept all his articles from the old days and feed them into a special markov generator program that's available on the internet (Google for JabberKatz). The articles themselves should still be available by searching Slashdot.

Here's what it spat out today:

" As you may imagine, we catch a lot of time playing computer games on the Internet. " They had become obsessed with online killing, reported another TV reporter. They had delved into militia and hate-group websites, some papers said.

The United States has become a crusade for conformity, intimidation and exclusion.

There are thousands of working actors, but most often stories are posted from other sources or posted and readers are given links. Links are now a hallmark of the Monica Lewinsky scandal has crystallized the difference between choosing and blocking.

In my mind, both movies (and the author of God and the New York City, Chicago and LA, schoolyard massacres are unknown. Nor has one ever occurred in Canada, even though it's rarely explained and dubiously supported.

It's hard to be rational about this idiocy. " American Pie " is an proselytizing book (with a foreword by our own Robin " roblimo " Miller, Editor-In-Chief for the Open Source Software Development. "

This was pretty tough to read, not only in Disney World but in the chips and disk drives of a Silicon Graphics Irix Workstation.

Levy calls this new species, a fusion of humans and intelligent machines. This is the computer user's first bill of rights. The media have turned bland and timid. Though H.L. Mencken called them " Boobus Americanus ") who specialized in defining virtue and trying to live up to that responsibility. Mostly, people talk about memes, they are not. These reporters are never prosecuted. That's because courts have repeatedly ruled that the reporters are carrying out activities that are protected by the First Amendment end at the school door, when many kids, especially geeks, have spent much of the past year, TV stations, networks and newsmagazines sounded a steady stream of alarms about perverts, predators and porn online. Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, now Gates. Napster, Linux, Gnutella, P2P, Napster -- it seems only right to honor Wells, the father of science fiction franchises. In a different sense, open source and free software movements out of a series of one-liners, set gags, set-ups and cultural in-jokes and spoofs.

Ban internet gaming

[nurb432]

Even non-net games should be banned. They are a total waste of time and resources, and only serve to rot the brains of 'players' who are being manipluated by the media giants to purchase products.

Nothing good comes out of these 'electronic video games'.

Re:Ban internet gaming

[JustShootMe]

I have to disagree with you there. There is no excuse for banning something you don't like - even if it actually *does* damage the brains of others. It's their choice whether to damage their own brains or not. It doesn't affect you, so lay off.

Keep that up and you'll turn into Jack Thompson, who's about to get sanctioned by a judge for doing something really stupid.

Do we have to *subsidize* it? That's an entirely different story, but doesn't really come into play in this argument.

Re:Ban internet gaming

[dido]

Is that you, Jack Thompson?

Re:Ban internet gaming

[Sinesurfer]

Two words, Lara Croft.

Regards Karl Stephens
A nerd is someone who's life revolves around technology.
A geek is someone who's life revolves around technology and they love their life!

Re:Ban internet gaming

[Voltageaav]

Yes! Ban all gaming on your Campus! Then see how many people enroll with your school. I'd Imagine less than the number who transfer out. You'll get some people who wouldn't care, but I know I'd be out of there damn quick. Oh yeah, doesn't the government pay based on number of students enrolled?

Re:Ban internet gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen too many kids more worried about gaming and going out than they are about their grades. I've know some that would play games on their computer, during class and complain about how hard the tests were or how unfair the teacher was.

If these kids are going to leave b/c we cut off their gaming "fix", then good riddance. At least their parents will be saving some money.

My Halo 3 story

[suv4x4]

Recently I purchased one of the limited Halo 3 packages. It looked great. But the game wouldn't start! Upon further investigation I remember I microwaved the disk for 3 minutes for no particular reason whatsoever.

I'm still pissed off though. Nowhere on the package it didn't say specifically about microwaving Halo 3.

TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, man.

Virginia Tech

[O('_')O_Bush]

We're having the exact same problem. Ever since the release date, the network has been ridiculously slow. Me and my roommate play a lot of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy which requires close to no latency to play well. We haven't been able to play because there is a half+ second delay between us and our opponents. :(

Re:Virginia Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part is that you are in college and still write things like *Me and my roommate*. Maybe you should play less Jedi Knight and study a little bit more.

Shitty network

[turbofisk]

Sounds like your proud of having a shitty network there... Way to go!

#5

[Tavor]

Fact 5. The network was not experiencing issues, it was simply inadequate. Packet shaping the UDP is only a temporary fix, network use will only grow in the future. Face it, this is the same thing as the big Telcos eliminating Net Neutrality, just on a smaller scale and with less money-grubbing.

Re:#5

[Romancer]

Now I'm all for net neutrality, but a University network is not the same as an ISP or intermediary backbone carrier. There are very important differences that are being overlooked if you are comparing the two on the same grounds.

This is actually more on the lines of parents installing filtering/throttling software on their network to which the child connects their computer, so that child doesn't cause problems with their telecommute. This is a tasked network in place for specific purposes already, not a neutral network connection to begin with.

Bandwidth check please

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought the point of this was that halo 3 might be using an above average level of bandwidth for a multiplayer fps-game
given the post identifies what the peak gaming times are, it's assumed that there are a lot of gamers on the network
prior to halo3 the network handled such game time traffic just fine with no slowdown on the network
but after the release of halo, the network suddenly begins to crawl
the diagnosis and response are on par

what is missing is how much they had throttled UDP traffic given that it was enough to cause gamers to complain
which would have meant it was enough that it resulted in poor / bad game performance
if it was throttled to something respectable then there's something inherently wrong with halo3
if it was throttled to something aggressive then this post is a non-issue and is flamebait

so can anyone confirm exactly how much bandwidth halo3 is sucking up?

dorms should be isolated

[socsoc]

Just another example of why dorms should be isolated from the university's network. if they need to get in, they can VPN...

UDP is also used for DHT (Bittorrent)

[Kupo]

Maybe I'm off my rocker, but I believe my Bittorrent client uses UDP for DHT. Perhaps the school's pipe was being saturated by torrent downloads to begin with, and Halo was merely the straw that broke the camel's back? The fact that shaping UDP fixed the bandwidth issue tells me that an online game couldn't be the cause of it unless everyone decided to skip class for a campus-wide Halo-fest.

iPhone

[giminy]

Sounds like the old iPhone excuse: "OMG, teh networks is down, it must be new product xyz's fault, and not my network misconfigurations!!11!!"

I have Halo 3; it complains about "Open NAT"

[jerkychew]

When I launch an online game of Halo 3 it complains that I don't have "Open NAT" enabled. I've been in the IT industry for ten years, albeit as a Windows admin, and I've never heard of Open NAT. A google search for the term brings up - surprise, surprise - this xbox support page. According to the page,

* Open NAT means that either the port-assignment policy is minimal or the device has a fully compliant version of UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) enabled by default.
        * Moderate NAT means that the port-assignment policy is minimal, but the device is filtering addresses or ports.
        * Strict NAT means the port-assignment policy is aggressive.

It looks like the network needs for Halo 3 are more picky than every other game I've played - WoW, WC3, Halo 2 etc play just fine. Admittedly if I want to host a game in WC3 I need to open a couple ports, but at least Blizzard tells me what ports to open. It looks like Microsoft's strategy is to just throw everything under a uPNP umbrella and call it a day. If they're this lazy with something as simple as port communication, I'm not surprised that they're doing other shady things with their IP stack, causing headaches for network admins the world over.

Re:I have Halo 3; it complains about "Open NAT"

[promiscuous-mode]

Just another example of Microsoft creating their own terminology for existing ones like "full cone nat", "restricted cone nat", and "port restricted cone nat".

Seems like to me there aren't any really good online explanations for the different kinds of NAT other then the one on Wikipedia.

Re:I have Halo 3; it complains about "Open NAT"

[Brigade]

No .. the network needs aren't any different. You just don't have a clue.

All UPnP (Correctly capitalized) does is automate the process you're using to play WC3, whithout having to bother you with port assignments. And if you've ever exectued your "Test Network Settings" dialog in your 360, your network would have been classified accordingly (along with a descriptor). Also you can dig up the ports that Live wants opened on Xbox's site. They're mostly used for voice communication and matchmaking.

Also, I suppose that using BitTorrent (which tends to "throw everything under a UPnP umbrella) would be an issue for you as well, but you'll have to figure out port assignments for that yourself.

UPnP is pretty handy .. I have a network at home with 4 adults, and 7 bandwidth-sucking devices. Three of them use Bittorrent so I have P2P traffic throttled, and all 7 of them have at least 1 port assignment at almost all times.

This would be a story if ...

[slashdotmsiriv]

"Duke Nukem Forever Causing Network Issues"

"Duke Nukem Forever Causing Network Issues"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, that one is a story ...!

Mod: -1 JackThompson

[Nirvelli]

n/t

Our campus had a similar problem

[Taulin]

At our campus, we had a similar problem, however, it was more perplexing. We found traffic to increase at night, so we simply turn it off at night, and that solved our problem.

Re:Our campus had a similar problem

[rdoger6424]

Did the faculty also see a decrease in load? How about admissions?
(Don't woosh me bro)

Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sad that we live in a day when instead of trying to find a solution to a problem that fixes an issue. We simply try to find limits to reshape and alter the problem, without ever trying to address it.

UDP Packets

[LordMyren]

Just for the record, dropped (shaped) udp packets are not recovered. TCP/IP notices dropped packets, has them resent, and automatically lowers the connection's transmission rate, whereas with UDP you're just tossing EMP's into people's datastreams. UDP/IP is much more primitive, and relies on application level consistency checks, which, for the record, almost never ever ever monitor packet drops & throttle themselves down when packets start dropping. Thats why most packet filtering systems simply de-prioritize UDP and will not drop UDP.

Re:UDP Packets

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why most packet filtering systems simply de-prioritize UDP and will not drop UDP.

Nope, not true at all.

Where are all these extra "de-prioritize" UDP packets supposed to go? If packets are not dropped that means they have to reside some where while waiting for available upstream bandwidth on the pipe, so they are stored in a buffer. The buffer is intentionally limited to a certain size, because at some point it is actually defeating to hold packets back for too long as they become too stale and no longer useful to the application that sent them. It would be unrealistic to hold every packet until it can be transmitted, because in a typical network environment such as a campus with heavy traffic you will NEVER catch back up from the buffer! Data would keep coming in faster than your pipe can transmit it and the buffer would just keep growing. What are you going to do, hold a packet for 24 hours then finally transmit it? What good does that do any one?

No, at a certain point you have to accept the fact that there just isn't enough uptream bandwidth and you have to start dropping packets so at least some streams can get through in a relativly timely fashion. And since UDP data is typically time sensitive data it is actually better to drop some of the UDP packets than to hold them back for too long. If you hold a UDP packet in a buffer for too long the data becomes stale and would no longer be useful to the remote end even if you finally sent it. So by buffering for too long you actually waste buffer memory and upstream bandwidth by sending out packets that will no longer be usefull.

Face it, dropping packets due to congestion is a way of life that can not be avoided...

Since when is a single paragraph front-page worthy

[Mex]

There's no in-depth info, there's no link to an article, it's not a review, there's no real information.

Seriously, editors, what the hell.

Re:Wait a second.ncome in the intervening time (an

[@madeus]

This is going off topic, but I don't want to let this one slide (not least as you called the OP 'flagrantly ignorant', which IMO is just plain wrong - it was bit of a flame, but I think it was on the money).

That little piece of paper can mean a huge different in how much you are paid once you graduate. Is that fair? No, but it is not stupid to go to college. That is an incorrect assertion. Going to college does not mean you earn more, but the evidence is that the people who are more likely to earn more any way (more likely as they are to have come from a well educated, white middle class background, to invoke a stereotype) do typically go to college. They are not smarter for going to college, and going to college does not make them inherently able to earn more.

What happens is, after several years of non-compulsory higher education (i.e. instead of bailing out at 16, they stay on till 21-22), most people end up in jobs they could have been in anyway if they'd spent those years actually working in their field. Instead of making a positive income in the intervening time (and doing that to make investments, and pay for their own place and getting an early step on the property ladder) they end up saddling themselves with thousands of GBP/USD/EUR worth of debt (and/or have their parents pick up the tab).

If you are doing a college course in computing in the UK or US (or most parts of Europe), my advice is: DON'T. Total waste of your time. Take an entry level position now, and change job after a year or two. Do that a couple of times until you feel you are moderately able in your field and earning comfortably. Don't get sucked into one job for too long if it's not what you ultimately want to do or if it doesn't pay enough.

I would note if I had gone to college instead of getting (a pretty poor paying) first job, I wouldn't have been able to buy my first place when I was 18 and I wouldn't already have been earning 30-50% above an average graduate's salary by the time I was 20-21. All in all, 10 years later as it is, I'd be much worse off.

My mother is university lecturer as it happens, and teaches medical students. Despite her being quite senior and well paid, and about to retire, I've been earning more than her since I was 20. Which is a bad indictment of the value society places on those in teaching positions and and indication of how big the deficit still is good software/systems engineers (formally qualified or not).

With regard to:

The stupid part is to rely on your college education to make you an outstanding member of whatever field you are in As far as software developers go, maybe 1 in 30-50 graduates are keepers (at interview), which I'd say is about the same for non-graduates, probably slightly worse odds than it is for non-graduates. I would say this is because there are usually a number of candidates that think graduating is all that's required, and that J2EE is the be-all and end all (and that operating systems, SQL databases and LDAP directories are "stuff they don't need to worry about" - I expect that is a familiar experience for many here).

Never mind 'making people an outstanding member of their field they are in', they should be at least teaching them more than they could learn themselves down the local library in half the time. Currently, that is not happening. The GOOD graduates are the ones who've taught themselves things that are outside the curriculum (and it's that very spirit that makes them valuable throughout their careers).

What firehose?

[supabeast!]

Isn't the whole point of the firehose to keep garbage like this from getting posted?

Or is this just the editors really reaching for a crazy anti-Microsoft rant? Maybe Vista is just so bad that people aren't even using it enough to write complaints and security screeds for /. to link to.

TAGGED AS KDAWSONSUCKS

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly, man.

Success

[codingmasters]

Well I guess this does prove that Halo 3 has been a success at the very least!

I'm glad I missed all that

[johnsie]

A whole lot of people dont do anything anymore other than sit in front of a computer/console all day. Gaming and social networking is turning society into a bunch of vegetables how never leave their rooms.

So how's this newsworthy?

[iguy]

Is there an article behind this? Did this sysadmin do ANYTHING to prove or find what the real issue was?

Sounds like the point is "It says Halo3 causing problems" so it must be newsworthy. If there was an article behind this explaining why this was an issue and had details such as Network graphs showing overloaded routers on the LAN or switches being overloaded or dropping UDP packets or something.. then we'd have something here.

Instead all this says is NOTHING of value.

Scotty

[Madsy]

I need more power!

Pointless stories

[sharperguy]

Yeah so the other day, i was walking around town with my mate, and we were really thirsty.

And we walked for ages, until we met this guy, and we asked him for a drink, and he gave us a drink!

this one time...

[ShaunC1000]

I had users complaining that they couldn't connect to the network. I reset the switch and it worked again. Interesting story huh?