I've snipped the first post to make it easier to find the
discussion, and because it's mostly moot since we're now filtering outgoing
morpheus. You can read those instructions at
http://www.rescomp.berkeley.edu/resources/news/20010911/

We in Information Technology Services are aware that the network is
getting unacceptably slow. This message provides some background
information on why the Internet link is slow and what we are doing to
address the problem.
 
All Brandeis users share a single high-speed connection to the Internet.
Unlike the case at many peer institutions, there is no discrimination
between student and administrative users here. In fact the top ten users
of network bandwidth are all undergraduate student machines.
 
Some of the recent problems can be attributed to Tuesday's events.
Downtown New York was a major hub for Internet traffic to and from the
Northeast. Some regional Internet links have been taken over by the FCC
for emergency use. Most online news sites, MSN.com, and the main AOL
Instant Messenger servers have simply been overloaded by unusually heavy
traffic these last few days.
 
However, the primary use of the network in the student residences, and the
primary reason it has been slowing down since Opening Sunday, is massive
transfers of large music files. On a shared, non-discriminating network
like ours, if some users generate a lot of network traffic, there is less
"room" for other uses of the network. Until Tuesday's events sparked an
increased interest in news web sites, a single MP3 file sharing program
being used heavily by about 100 students accounted for more than 40% of
all network traffic -- more than all normal web browser, email, and
instant messaging traffic for all 4500 campus users combined. Much of that
traffic was outgoing (music files being sent from Brandeis to random
Internet users), so it did not benefit Brandeis users at all.
 
While we do have the technical capability to block certain kinds of
network traffic, no blocking is perfect, and we do not believe that it is
appropriate for us to dictate what you can and can not do. For various
ethical and legal reasons, we would prefer to have no idea what students
do in the privacy of their own rooms.
 
So, we simply ask you to be considerate of other students. To ease current
congestion, please limit your high bandwidth activities, such as
downloading (or offering for download) movies and songs. Please limit your
use of file sharing applications like Gnutella, Audiogalaxy Satellite,
Morpheus, Hotline, or WinMX. If you have large amounts of data transfers
to do, try to do them during off-peak times, between 2:00 am and 12:00
noon.
 
If you do not know whether you are using the network "a lot," you can
visit
 
  http://netinfo.unet.brandeis.edu/
 
to see where your personal bandwidth usage sits in comparison with others.
 
We understand that many "file sharing" programs are difficult to disable
temporarily when you are not using them. Indeed, that "trojan horse"
feature contributes to the popularity of those networks. Once you run the
program, you become a server available to all other Internet users. This
creates network and security problems that I wish the purveyors of these
programs would take some responsibility for.
 
I've posted some information on responsibel use of the most popular file
sharing programs, put together by a student at UC Berkeley, at
 
  http://my.brandeis.edu/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00008k
 
If you have more information on other programs, please post a followup.
 
For our part, here is what ITS has done and plans to do:
 
 1) I'm sending this message to let you all in the loop. I invite
    an open discussion of these issues at
 
      http://my.brandeis.edu/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00008k
 
    Please don't send me email. I don't have time to respond individually
    and I'd rather you post your opinion publicly where other
    students can see it anyway. If you're concerned about privacy, don't
    worry, the bboard will let you post anonymously (you're given the
    option of anonymity after logging in).
 
 2) We are going to increase the capacity of the main shared Internet
    connection. I am sorry this has not yet happened; it's no better than
    it was last year. The upgrade was planned for early August, but it
    did not happen because the ITS budget was severely reduced. Some of
    the anticipated funding was recovered last week. But since Tuesday, it
    has become difficult to obtain new large-capacity digital lines in
    the Northeast. Therefore relief in form of a higher-speed connection can
    not possibly come within a month and might not be available until next
    semester. Until then, we must prioritize and conserve.
 
 3) In 1998-1999, we attempted to block all access to Napster on an
    emergency basis to prevent network collapse. We have no interest in
    doing that sort of thing again. It did improve network performance,
    but at great cost in good will. Technically savvy students could evade
    the block anyway. We do not want to put honest people at a disadvantage.
 
 4) Starting last year, we implemented traffic priority levels. Basically,
    things like email and web traffic get first shot at the available
    bandwidth, and identifiable Morpheus traffic is not allowed to use
    more than a certain percentage.
 
    This Tuesday, I placed some more drastic reductions on Morpheus/KazAA
    traffic in order to let critical news and email through. Those limits
    have now been lifted.
 
    I believe  that we have reached an equilibrium between acceptable
    performance and determined MP3 downloaders who have demonstrated that
    they will break any rule in order to get more than their fair share of
    network bandwidth. By allowing a reasonable level (currently 2
    megabits per second shared among all Morpheus and Gnutella users), we
    avoid pointless cat-and-mouse games with one form of network
    traffic disguised as another. We saw a lot of that when Napster was
    "banned" in 1998-1999. It was no fun for anyone.
 
 5) We run a caching web proxy server. It stores copies of popular web
    pages so that they can be served locally (much faster for everyone in
    both short and long run). If you use Internet Explorer, it probably
    found the cache automatically. The proxy server also filters out most
    banner ads.
 
    The proxy server is getting a bit overloaded, so it will be upgraded
    soon. Instructions for using it with Netscape will be posted after
    that is done.
 
 6) This summer, we hired a student to build what you see at
 
      http://netinfo.unet.brandeis.edu/
 
    If we are to set rules and policies about "abusive" levels of
    network traffic, I believe it is incumbent on us to measure fairly
    and let you evaluate your own usage. I believe a database that tracks
    network usage without discrimination as to content meets that goal.

This spam has been sent to the 719 registered owners of computers in the
student residences that have sent or received more than 50MB over the
Brandeis Internet link in the last week. You're the stakeholders, so what
develops is up to you. Post to
 
  http://my.brandeis.edu/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00008k
 
and let us know what you want to happen. The information in the netinfo
database could be used in a lot of ways. One possible rule would be to
define X number of days in the top 10 as abuse; at which point the thing
to do is what? That's the sort of thing that needs to be discussed openly,
I think.
 
Personally, I do not believe that it is our job to inquire into possible
violations of copyright law by the users of popular file sharing programs
unless we have received a specific complaint (which, by the way, we do
receive and act on). Some may believe differently.

Of course, that also necessitates individual users sharing the files they got from the Gnutella network, and <gasp> maybe suffering an occasional performance decrease when someone downloads something from their computer. I know it's not really fair; those with the most offerings will suffer the worst initial performance decrease. But via downloading, redundancy, and some publicity for up-and-coming hotspots, eventually everything could even itself out.

Also... I'd like to take this opportunity to say STOP SHARING BLOATED mp3 FILES. If the sampling rate is past 192 Kbps, you're defeating most of the purpose of mp3's in the first place. 128 Kbps is fine for most purposes. Honest to goodness, as much as education can enable dishonest users to take advantage of controls and restrictions, it can also have widespread benefits. Learn a little something about those files you're downloading. It'll do you good.

Meanwhile, back in MacLand, I'm pretty much screwed in principle. In reality, I've got plenty of PC-savvy friends that can hook me up if I'm desperate. But the fact remains that as both a Mac user and a relative newcomer to P2P file transfer, not only can I rely less on intranet resources, but I'm also less likely to account for huge bandwidth portions. I'm little! Ignore me!

(speaking of file transfer, I've been scouring Gnutella, the intranet, and the web for a perfectly legal shareware file, the Starbound II 1.01 Expansion Pack, and I can't find it anywhere. If anyone has any leads, let me know. The company's homepage is fragged beyond all belief.)

Here is some suggestions,

Maybe we could decide some time during which sharing software are not limited in bandwith. In fact, when the downloading is too slow, we tend to let the P2P program running the all days instead of just getting a file and shut it off, that allowes lots of uploading.

We could also give to everyone a certain amount of megabits to upload during the month (let say 300megabits as some cable company do) after what the uploading capacity of his connection become very slow and the beginning of the month should not be the same for everybody.

I understand that the 2MB/sec limit on Morpheus was only for an emergency situation, but nonetheless, isn't that a bit extreme? Having to share 2MB/sec with the rest of campus makes usage of the program literally impossible - just imagine if all Internet use were limited to that - each user would only get less than 1K/s. Now, 2MB/sec PER USER sounds a bit more reasonable.

Now, I was told last year that we had three main servers and that one was entirely down. I was then told that the UNET help desk people might know how to fix it but weren't allowed to, and that those people who had the authority to fix it didn't or couldn't or wouldn't. I don't know how true this is, but if it is true, then it is evidence of the real problem here - possible solutions are not being implemented.

Ok, now, here's my solution - lay more lines, build more servers, etc. We're a university - we have money for these kinds of projects.

Finally, let me just say that I AM doing my part to curb my usage - I know plenty of people who run IRC servers, webpage servers, FTP servers, off their computers here. I do not do that.

• I help various faculty and staff members in the Sciences with computer support. Many of those people remember the Napster ban fondly and ask if it couldn't be reinstituted permanently. I commend Rich for his approach to the problem, his attempts to accomodate all users fairly and to discuss the policies openly. It would be useful for some students to articulate how their legitimate use of Gnutella, Morpheus, etc. enriches their academic experience. This would be a good place to articulate that.
• Bandwidth within the campus network is excellent, due to substantial investments the university has made in the network infrastructure. It has not always been this way. Ask a senior or an alum what it used to be like. I move 20-30 GB of data a day at peak speeds of close to 9 MB/s in our data backup operations without severely taxing the network. Unless I'm much mistaken, the same kind of data transfer rates can be had within the dorms.
• Setting up internal servers for legitimate content should not be a problem. The UNet system provides centralized server space for all users, and there are very few limits to setting up your own. I'm not sure quite what Travis is referring to above, but it doesn't match my experience of how ITS operates.
• Asking for the moon won't help. How much is 2 MB(ytes)/s? Something like 10 simultaneous CD-quality audio streams. Do we really think Brandeis should be providing that (or even a tenth of that) for every user? Where is all that data going to go?

Many computers have little or no outgoing traffic. Sending e-mail, for example, would not show up as outgoing traffic from your computer (it's traffic to the local mail server). For similar reasons, a lot of web browsing wouldn't show up.

Anything beyond the top 100, or even the top 50, is really irrelevant.

The threshold for being in the top 50 (incoming plus outgoing) is just under 2 Gigabytes of total uncached external use. That's 3 times your usage.

"However, my 'last week' numbers are larger than my 'last month'"

Yeah, that could be considered a usability bug.

The explanation is that the hourly and daily counters get incremented every hour; the weekly once per day; and the monthly once per week. Everything should sync up on Mondays.

"outgoing traffic of 414K puts me at #702 for the last day"

Anything under 2MB is statistically insignificant. We don't bother adding any hourly total less than 100K to the database.

"Are there 2,000 students who do nothing with their computers (or what?)"

On-campus traffic, anything less than 100K in a given hour, and anything through the web proxy server (which saves about 50% of bandwidth due to caching) is skipped. That leaves a lot you can do while not registering any significant amount of external use.

So what's the real issue?

There are people running Morpheus 24/7 with large collections of MP3s regularly sending over 50M per hour. Most are sending a lot more than they receive. That's how Morpheus works. Most users are freeloaders leeching files from a few chumps who donate all the network bandwidth and bear most of the risk of being prosecuted for copyright violations. Then the folks who run the core promise "free music" with a wink and a nod and sell information about you to advertisers. It's left as an exercise for the reader to evaluate whether allowing 20 simultaneous downloads of Britney Spears from your computer to a bunch of teenagers with cable modems at home is more important than the other things people needed to do on the network this week.

The top 50 use 31% of incoming bandwidth and 51% of outgoing bandwidth. The top 10 are even more out of proportion. One has posted here that it's unreasonable for us to ask him to be more considerate of other users.

mysql> select sum(in_week),sum(out_week) from users
  where ip>inet_aton('129.64.128.0')
   and (in_week+out_week)/(1024*1024) > 2039;
+-----------------+------------------+
| sum(in_week)    |  sum(out_week)   |
+-----------------+------------------+
|  87,677,784,282 |  142,169,347,546 |
+-----------------+------------------+

mysql> select sum(in_week),sum(out_week) from users
  where ip>inet_aton('129.64.128.0')
    and (in_week+out_week)/(1024*1024) < 2039;
+-----------------+------------------+
| sum(in_week)    |  sum(out_week)   |
+-----------------+------------------+
| 199,143,105,203 |  135,936,067,490 |
+-----------------+------------------+

I'm going to restructure my shared folders so they are removed from the internet section but still available over the network.

My suggestion is you do the same. If you have movies or other files that are obvious bandwidth hogs (like movies or warez or whatever)keep them on campus only. Not a technical fix to the system but I'm sure it'll help.

I'm writing this post from Columbia where I'm visiting a friend: Although there are just as many file sharing tools as at Brandeis, I still get max. 1 mb/s downloads. This was possible at Brandeis end of August, before all students arrived. I realise that Brandeis and Columbia do not compare when it comes to IT budget, but I will try to find out, whether they have split internet connections for dorms and educational uses.

Perhaps that would be the solution: Separate lines, at least virtually split, so that there is a greater awareness that bandwidth actually still costs money. A solution I propose for the file sharing tools, is that registry keys or other scripts be mailed to people in order to deactivate the outgoing sharing.

However, on a technical side, I have also realised, that there is considerable bandwidth congestion between dorm rooms (I'm talking within the same building/floor), i.e. copying larger files from other computers is also quite slow - they are switched, not hubed, right?

A solution to the mass mp3/movie downloads would of course be a central repository within Brandeis, where students can up/download files and thereby save bandwidth and time. Of course this would require a significant investment in terms of $ for the disk space required, but with $5 or so per person, this would really not be such a problem - the only problems would of course be the legal ones from the RIAA and DMCA, but how would they find out, if its on an internal network - chances are small, and if they would, just build in an autodestruct mechanism... that's not too hard with all the hackers out there.

Whatever turns out to be the solution, it shouldn't be blocking, as that would ruin one of Brandeis' spirits, that of personal and intellectual freedom.

HTH. I'm following the thread with interest...

TCP 1214 is Morpheus (40 gigabytes), 80 is web (23 gigabytes), the rest are mostly random client ports. Email (25) isn't even in the top 20.

RealAudio varies but is most often on UDP port 6970. Yesterday, we transferred about 360 megabytes of RealAudio -- less than 1% of Morpheus traffic.

One simple thing we could do to improve _outgoing_ traffic performance, which has an indirect positive impact on _incoming_ traffic because it would speed acknowledgement packets, would be to block outgoing Morpheus server traffic. This would not prevent students from using the program to download stuff; it _would_ prevent the rest of the Internet from using all our bandwidth in ways that benefit no one at Brandeis.

It would be possible for people to work around the block in the unlikely event anyone is distributing legitimate content not available elsewhere with Morpheus. But there would be no great incentive for anyone to do so. Opinions?

It's worth repeating something Robin said: she has given up listening to the BBC because the link is so congested. And that's weeks ago, not just the last week when we might reasonably blame it on unusually high demand on their server. How many other perfectly reasonable things are not even being tried?

Morpheus's share of bandwidth may be increasing not (just) because those users are hogs, but because it's one application that isn't latency-sensitive. That is, you can start a download (or several downloads), go off to class, come back a few hours later, and you're happy. You can't do that with RealAudio, and it's getting to the point that people are giving up on the web.

All the ports are configured switched 10mbps half-duplex. There might be some bottleneck at the building or regional switch, but you should be getting about 6 mbps raw speed (after overhead and flow control) locally.

Note that network bandwidth is stated in bits, not bytes. Dividing by 8 bits/byte gets you 750 kilobytes/sec. Add 1 second for connection establishment and nagle algorithm, add application overhead and general Windows stupidity and you should be able to transfer a typical 4MB MP3 track in under 15 seconds.

If you're getting much worse than that, most likely your ethernet card (or your partner's) is screwing up. Some newer cards don't negotiate 10mbps half-duplex well. Your card probably came with a utility that can fix the link speed at 10 half.

All the switches can physically handle 100mbps full duplex. They are throttled back to 10 because the bottleneck is almost always the internet uplink anyway. We also have some concerns about poorly written programs (or deliberate DoS) soaking up campus links. The uplink from each building is trunked to give at least 200mbps, which lets about 30 talk at a time at _maximum_ speed, which is more than is usually happening. Remember the internet link you're all sharing is a much narrower bottleneck.

There was a plan to upgrade to gigabit links and allow 100mbps link in the dorms by August, but the network budget was eliminated (not reduced) in July. Unfortunately that is a story I don't feel confortable putting in writing (and I don't know all the details anyway).

I cannot give advice about how best to transfer files that might get you in trouble under the laws of the day. However I think it would be possible for WBRS to serve the campus community better. They're primarily externally oriented. If they were playing what people wanted to hear, you could turn on the radio and use zero bandwidth. If they pay ASCAP fees, it might even be legal for them to run an MP3 streamer like icecast, limited to campus for bandwidth reasons. They keep approaching us about ways to stream to off-campus listeners since their old provider got frightened out by lawsuits, but I don't think we can afford that.

http://my.brandeis.edu/bboard/q-and-a-thread-alert.tcl?thread_id=00008k

You can do more at http://my.brandeis.edu/bboard/edit-alerts

This software isn't the prettiest web bboard around, but it's rock-solid reliable and has a few features rare elsewhere.

All Brandeis users share a single high-speed connection to the Internet. Unlike the case at many peer institutions, there is no discrimination between student and administrative users here. In fact the top ten users of network bandwidth are all undergraduate student machines.

and then later he added:

The most common answer to requests for more money for Internet bandwidth is "the students will just blow it all on stolen music and warez anyway."

I agree that this is the prevailing sentiment on the faculty/staff side. In light of this, perhaps it would be worth thinking, from the undergraduate student point of view, of solutions that would split dorm use and office use, and possibly allow student management of policies (e.g., ban/allow Morpheus) on the dorm side. I don't know how technically feaible this would be, but it might prevent students from getting unfairly blamed for all the problems faculty and staff have with the net (and they're certainly more than capable of causing their own problems).

However, I think that there is a further problem, in that many of the students who use these P2P programs are unaware of the effect that their usage is having on the network as a whole.

Many of my peers just see Morpheus, Bear Share, etc. as a replacement to Napster--a source for MP3 files. However, what they usually overlook is the fact that after they download the files, other internet users can then upload the files--subsequently, lowering the speed of the network (which people then complain about).

I think that before a very drastic course of action is taken (e.g. blocking Morpheous and other P2P programs) occurs, an educational campagin should be launched. Students need to realize what they're doing to the network as a whole by running these P2P programs; furthermore, they also need to realize that they're monopolizing bandwith that belongs to the Brandeis Community as a whole.

More bandwith is not necessarily the anwser (though the thought of it is tempting). People need to be aware of what they're doing...
Some P2P program users don't realize the (technical) effects that runinng a program has. That is why people need to be educated with regard to what they're doing, and hopefully, as a result of this education, people will curb their usage, and the whole community will benefit.