I work for core networking for the Univ. of Missouri and am a student who uses Napster.
I understand the problem. I mean, several weeks ago one res-hall (250 students) was cranking out 35 MBit (all Napster/MP3). We have a 45MBit link to the Internet. We put a filter on the router just to count # of packets going to the Napster server - several hundred per second. That just to the server, NOT mp3 files going across the wire.
I can understand turning it off. Although we started with the biggest offenders at first - that doesn't work. It's the large number of people using it - not several major offenders.
So how to nail it? filter out anything to that class C - fine. That'll work temporarily. Proxy's are abundant. DNS it - they'll use external DNS servers. The only viable way I know of to really shut it down is possibly to shut off ICMP inbound. Although I'm going to try to write a filter that would nail the Napster protocol. Blocking ICMP would suck, but it would work. If anyone knows a better idea, please please let me know.
Brent Deterding Univsity of Missouri - Columbia Data Network Planning & Support - Core Group Research Computing Group Grader - CECS 253 (UNIX)
3COM cards in general are faster because of the way they handle things at the packet level. Instead of waiting for an entire packet to come across before accepting it, they look at only the first few bytes of the header and if they're good then pass it through. ie - if you have a bunch of 3COMs on a hub with a large collision domain then you're performace may suck because there are *lots* more short-rounds (short packets 64 bytes). a 3COM won't always catch these. Other than that, there aren't all that many settings to really change in software. So, 3COM may have started doing this in their modems now as well, not only their NICs.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for core networking for the Univ. of Missouri and am a student who uses Napster.
I understand the problem. I mean, several weeks ago one res-hall (250 students) was cranking out 35 MBit (all Napster/MP3). We have a 45MBit link to the Internet. We put a filter on the router just to count # of packets going to the Napster server - several hundred per second. That just to the server, NOT mp3 files going across the wire.
I can understand turning it off. Although we started with the biggest offenders at first - that doesn't work. It's the large number of people using it - not several major offenders.
So how to nail it? filter out anything to that class C - fine. That'll work temporarily. Proxy's are abundant. DNS it - they'll use external DNS servers. The only viable way I know of to really shut it down is possibly to shut off ICMP inbound. Although I'm going to try to write a filter that would nail the Napster protocol. Blocking ICMP would suck, but it would work. If anyone knows a better idea, please please let me know.
Brent Deterding
Univsity of Missouri - Columbia
Data Network Planning & Support - Core Group
Research Computing Group
Grader - CECS 253 (UNIX)
3COM cards in general are faster because of the way they handle things at the packet level. Instead of waiting for an entire packet to come across before accepting it, they look at only the first few bytes of the header and if they're good then pass it through. ie - if you have a bunch of 3COMs on a hub with a large collision domain then you're performace may suck because there are *lots* more short-rounds (short packets 64 bytes). a 3COM won't always catch these. Other than that, there aren't all that many settings to really change in software. So, 3COM may have started doing this in their modems now as well, not only their NICs.