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The Almighty Buck

Could This Be The End Of The Internet? 309

Posted by Cliff from the have-people-forgotten-what-it's-all-about? dept.
ll0yD asks: "There is an article at Security Focus blowing the horn on network security companies working to stop file sharing over the Internet and private networks. The main reason they are working on this is to combat Napster and other related "evil" network programs. I understand the need to protect copyrighted material, but this looks like it is going a little too far. If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online? Besides isn't file sharing what the Internet is about? What are your views?" This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas, be it via Napster, or a browser. Now I'm worried that some fool will start making noises about banning FTP.
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Could This be the End of the Internet? More

Could This be the End of the Internet?

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  • Re:Try reading the article! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh get a life, QoS is not a dick measuring contest.

    Ignorance like this really salts my pork. Have you even been to a dick measuring contest?

  • Remember when email and news first came about, they were only envisioned to move text around, not binary files (like software). So uuencode/uudecode was created to turn binaries into a format suitable for transport. So unless you're planning to shut down all net connectivity, then whatever connectivity remains can be used to encode binaries into and transport them. NOTHING WILL CHANGE! Clueless legislators. The net will SHOW them how futile their task is. They stand before the wind.
  • It's been mentioned before that this article isn't about blocking but about shaping Napster and other protocols so as to consume less bandwidth.

    Personally, I think that this is a sweet idea whose time has come. If used correctly this could solve a good portion of the QoS problems that plague bandwidth-limited organizations.

    I mean really, why should students be able to slurp up all of the bandwidth at a university at the expense of legitimate services like the campus web server? Sure students (or whoever) should be allowed to use Napster (or whatever), just not at the expense of the legitimate functions of the network.

    The beauty of shaping is that you can do this without having to descriminate between multiple network segments (i.e. the student dorms are universally bandwidth controlled for every protocol). So you don't have to screw over certain people entirely (just screw everybody partially) in order to achieve the desired result.

    Cha-ching!

  • Between downloading the latest Mandrake ISO for my soon to be functioning again web, file, and mail server, grabbing a handful of MP3s, listening to a realaudio broadcast of a radio station I like but get no reception on my stereo, downloading the new X-Men trailer, and casual websurfing on top of all that (Flash and Shockwave sites suck a good bit of bandwidth as well), and you can easily saturate 640Kb!

    I hate you dsl users so much :)


  • That ought to do wonders for enrollment. I seem to remember a slashdot article where it was said that fast access was touted as an important benefit of living on campus. If they ration or cut the wire, I will be very interested in seeing the effect this has on either enrollments or housing trends.
  • Article actually talks about 3 applications with very different approaches:

    • PacketShaper, etc - software/hardware designed to limit traffic per application based on ports app uses. This is actually a good thing - believe it or not, bandwith costs money ! If I remember correctly, FreeBSD-based firewalls supported bandwith quotas per user for quite lond time. Since Gnutella and at least 2 free /* open-source */ Napster clones allow you to use arbitrary server/port numbers this would eventually boil down to per-user bandwith control.
    • PacketHound, etc - software/hardware that locates and kills specific protocol. That's evil, of course, and probably freedom to choose protocol is freedom of speech, just like your choice of language /* Do I look like a lawyer ?!? */. However, this approach is not very effective. ssh, for example, allows you to tunnel TCP connections - encrypted, of course, multiple connections over one channel, etc. PacketHound won't puick this up. Actually, adding SSL layer in Gnutella would be great, that would solve this problem once and for all
    • MediaEnforcer - software athat uses Gnutella/Napster/etc protocols to track which user hosts which files. That software would allow, for example, user alpha@fsb.ru to search for ("Elections results" AND "Faked") and determine that user vpupkin@cityline.ru with ip 123.45.67.89 have material that is not suitable for minors, violates copyright laws and should be deemed as unappropriate as a whole ... If you dont know what KGB and it's successor, FSB, do with people who say unappropriate things, consider yourself very lucky !
      The problem lies in mechanism used by Gnutella and Napster - they return remote users' IP address instead of routing pieces of information thru network, i.e. if user alpha@fsb.ru sends request to it's closest Gnutella node, russia-relay@eff.org, node returns IP of the machine that has data requested. FreeNet [sourceforge.net], on the other hand, relays data thru network. For example alpha@fsb.ru requests file elections.html from russia-relay@eff.org, who requests file from vpupkin@cityline.ru and passes it to alpha@fsb.ru. That way every user is not aware about any node other his/her neghbors, and could not determine from which node material originated. That seems to be a comparably good solution, given that encryption is strong enough and protocol does not record any extra information.
  • How many users can you expect with a T1 and a properly configured proxy server? A lot. I've seen 5000 run on one t1, and it was pretty decent. You might check to see if IAState had a proxy server configured.

    --

  • Want to bypass pattern-detection? Encrypt your connection. Blocking media by pattern detection can't possibly work over the long term. These folks have never heard of steganography, the science of encoding hidden data streams within other data. I can make any protocol look like HTTP, and in fact I can make any data look like valid HTML for purposes of exchange. Putting music in a GIF image is trivial, and you can even do it without changing the appearance of the picture.

    But these manufacturers of bogus net filters will probably get some fools to invest in them. Maybe that's what the publicity is for.

    Bruce

  • several years ago i heard that either someone on the committee setting up ipv6, or someone petitioning it wanted to have a flag in ipv6 packets that would say whether the packet was obscene (or had obscene data).

    wow.
  • I hate to slam the /. editors, but

    "never attribute to malice what can be accounted for with stupidity"

    (or something to that effect.)
    yeah, I mangled it, but you get the gist...

  • The answer is for gnutella to communicate tunnelled over https. Because https is encrypted it will be impossible to tell whether a packet is from Gnutella, or from somebody shopping online. Or at least it will be more difficult.

    Alternatively you could tunnel gnutella through ssh, which was designed for this sort of thing. But https might be more fun - can you imagine the headlines if 'ISP accidentally blocks e-commerce'?
  • This is not possible.

    A file is no more than data stored on a computer. There is no way to totally block file transfers. it would undermine the very principle of free speech.

    We need to keep an eye on this, though. I am positive it will not be the end of the Internet because of the huge negative feedback and resistance - but that's why we need to keep an eye on it: we *are* the Internet. Not those silly computers that are connected. No, us, who have been around here a while and share ideals and principles. It is our job to make sure we protect those interests.. and because we will, this will not be the end of the Internet.

    I wouldn't allow it to be. Would you?

  • Iowa State didn't have a proxy, or, more accurately a caching server when I was there. I graduated in 1999. UNI, however, does have several of Cobalt's raq caching servers in place to cache, the ICN or Iowa Communication Network added caching servers this spring also. It's kind of a pain when you are authoring web pages on an off-campus server. Even with those caching servers in place, it's still slow.
    ---
  • The University of Northern Iowa, where I work, has only 5 T1 lines for it's 13,000 students. I think our net connection is slow as hell. The network admin guys blame the Iowa Communication Network, and their connection to PSINet. Iowa State University, where I got my degree, goes through the same connection, and it was never this slow.

    Interested parties can see connection information here: http://netview.cc.iastate.edu/cgi- bin/selectline [iastate.edu]

    As I am not really experienced in large network design, how many users per T1 should a person expect typically?

    ---

  • - sigh -

    The article talks about packet-sniffers who basically delay packets based ont the nature of the protocol (say, like port number used, or maybe even what is within that packet - "Hmmm, looks like a Napster packet, so, I'm gonna put it on the back-burner for a little while...").

    So, the next logical step with Gnutella is to use an innocuous protocol, say, like SMTP, where two Gnutella-NG server/clients transfer the warez using SMTP... The program could even break the big file in several manageable chunks, and re-assemble them. It could also "encrypt" the packets with a simple randomly-generated packet at the start of the transmission (sent by another method) to fool packet sniffers/delayers...

    Imagination will route through the most stringent censorship methods...


    --
    Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]

  • If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online?

    You're comparing apples and oranges here. I know; let's play a game. I want you to pick out which one of the following doesn't belong, and explain why not:

    • Sending your 1040 to the IRS via email
    • Using the gas company and your local bank's websites to pay your heating bill
    • Downloading an MP3 of "Song 21" by Alternative Band X from their offical website
    • Downloading an MP3 of "Oops.. I Did It Again" by Britney Spears from Napster

    The answer is the fourth one, because it's illegal to pirate music. Sending email and conducting ecommerce are perfectly legal (right now), as are downloading MP3s that the artist is specifically giving away.

    Hey, I love free music as much as the next guy, but don't kid yourselves. The situation of pirated MP3s is similar to that of child pornography on the Internet; it's just milder and more widely accepted. People have been cracking down on net kiddie porn and has that killed the Internet? Hardly.

    So no, this is yet another false prediction of the Imminent Death Of The Net [tuxedo.org] (as another ./er posted).

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • If there is significant interference with TCP, people will just move to UDP. That's a loss for the ISP: with TCP, they have a lot more information to manage the bandwidth intelligently. With UDP, they just get chunks of random looking bits floating back and forth.

    Besides, people will want to do video conferencing and other data intensive services. If the current crop of ISPs don't provide those services, others will. After all, we went from no commercial ISPs to a thriving Internet economy: widespread demand will be satisfied.

  • Why should things be posted anonymously? Thats not freedom, thats avoiding responsibility. You just don't want someone to give you shit for posting something on a public forum that people don't agree with. Most slashdot users don't, we all use handles and rarely if ever put personal information in our profile. HavenCo is a load of bullshit, they are no more free and independant as anyone else, your data is still traveling over wires that you don't own. They still have an IP, even with no governmental restrictions they can be completely blocked from the rest of the world. If you've got something worthwhile to say, own up to it you pussy.
  • We don't employ geeks other than me and my department coworkers. Everyone else is your standard office drone, for whom the PC is a tool to do the job they're paid to do, not a toy.

    And you must have missed the part in my original post where blocking access to napster and napster-like services we're trying to keep our company's relationship with the recording industry as favorable as possible; our business DEPENDS on the ability to license for exclusive use all kinds of intellectual property (film, video, music, photos, likenesses) as well as create our own.

    Compromising our legal obligations and the requirements of our licensors is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

  • Intelligent use of proxy servers for most services (I am a biased in favor of proxying in general) could help alot. When 500 users click on cnn.com in the morning only 1 copy of the page will actually need to be fetched. The majority of users go to a few sites often (Hotmail/Yahoo, CNN, etc.) unlike admin types who will probably be sucking down ISO images and big source downloads. For basic web browsing, 2KB/sec per user or so should be ok, if slow.
  • First, the intro given is misleading--the concerns are valid. This in NOT just about turning intRAnet filesharing down, it's about limiting high-bandwidth apps, like Napster and Gnutella.

    Second, this is not a bad thing. The clients demanding these are primarily bandwidth-strapped small universities, companies, etc., who have the complete right and often responsibility to make sure that the bandwidth is not saturated by mp3 downloads, but rather more useful pursuits. Y'know, thesis and dissertation research. Not to say that there aren't theses that use napster for real and valid research, but these will not be the norm.

    Now, this is a slippery slope and some ISPs will use it to slam their users. Users will move to less restrictive ISPs and the market will continue.
  • And given that gnutella uses straight HTTP to do the actual file transfer, well, I'm sure the implications are obvious.
  • But then that leads to the inevitable cat and mouse game where the gnutella people continuously reinvent the protocol and the blockers continuously add blocking hueristics. Until they start accidentally blocking other traffic that just gets caught up in the tangle of blocking criteria.
  • It's not the end of my Internet.
  • If enough restrictions are placed on what can be done over a network, new networks without such restrictions will pop up, possibly using different protocols.

    Fundamentally, Internet can happen with or without current protocols..
  • This disturbs me. Slashdot is all about community-responsible news reporting, but not just profits, but honesty, be it via the NYTimes, or Security Focus. Now I'm worried that Slashdot will start bribing my friends to hype news in their emails to me.
  • This is one reason that we need to go ahead, bite the bullet, and implement IPv6, so that we can get applications to use QoS more than they currently do. I mean, admin types don't like Napster/Gnuella/whatever when they are using 30%+ of their available bandwidth, but if you are running at low priority and are guaranteed not to be draining bandwidth from important applications, who would care?
  • The /. summary talks about "killing file-sharing" but the article is about bandwidth allocation. This are so different that either the /. link is wrong or the editors just got trolled big time.
    --
  • If you read the article, you discover that the single biggest reason why people are fighting this is net congestion. This all points back to Napster.

    If you take your dog into the woods and it attacks the cute fury little rodents and eats the birds and chases the deer so that nobody else can see nature in all of its glory, you shouldn't be surprised when somebody tells you you can't take your dog into the woods anymore.

    If you utilize Napster to download a huge hoard of music onto a machine you probably don't own, on a network you are basically borrowing, at a University where they have better things to do than stand idly buy why you use the available bandwidth of the school to download music you shouldn't have anyway, then you shouldn't be surprised when they put blocks on how much bandwidth you are allowed to use.

    If you work for a company and behaved this way most companies would just fire your Lilly White B---.

    Another example would be people who smoke cigarettes. You sit at a table smoking a cigarette and then you blow smoke into the face of the person sitting next to you who still might be eating. If he/she asks you to quit you whine "you're infinging on my right to smoke." This person should not be surpised when somebody finally says, "Fine, but I'll make it against the law for you to smoke where I eat. That'll solve my problem."

    My point is: Behave responsibly and people around you won't have a problem. Behave irresponsibly and people around you will find a means of forcing responsible behaviour.

    By the way, the Internet isn't about free speach, its about communication. If you are alway shouting then you should be surprised when somebody muzzles you.

  • This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas ...

    In the early days yes, the Internet was about sharing files, ideas, etc. ... but now it's all about commerce which is generated by allowing ACCESS to files and ideas.

    I have no opinion on the banning of file sharing (although I do have my opinion about Napster [dabuzz.net]) but to assume that today's internet is the same internet of last year is just naive.

    The internet is no longer about the free flow of ideas en masse, it is about the profitability of the product of content which is comprised of files, ideas, and other media. I don't see this as 'sharing', it is simply providing access at a fee (banner ads cost me bandwidth, screen real estate, and my eyeballs).

    While many of us would like to go back to the days of old where only "geeks" knew how to maneuver around gopher, do we also want to go back to the days of 14.4 modems and T1 lines being the end-all be-all in bandwidth? I mean come on guys, someone has to pay for the OC-468 line across the Atlantic!
  • Imminent Death of the Net Predicted is about S/N ratio, not people arbitrarily blocking programs they don't like.

    But the blocking being talked about isn't arbitrary. Aside from Media Enforcer, the products discussed are being used to attempt to ensure that there is enough signal (the protocols the people funding the bandwidth are expecting to be able to use) amidst the noise (additional protocols used by those who aren't footing the bill). This isn't any more ominous than news servers refusing to carry binaries groups, or postmasters fighting spam, because of the bandwidth consumed by those practices.

    If this turns into ISPs blocking Napster, or backbones fighting Gnutella, then we have a major problem, but students and employees don't have unfettered rights to the bandwidth of their educational institutions or employers.
  • What happens when the RIAA gets some tech ignorant judge to rule that major ISP's have to use this kind of thing, in order to protect the recording industries intellectual property.

    An old lawyer joke:

    Q: What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 80?

    A: Your honor.

  • Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!

    They would be relying on 1/3600th of the bandwidth only if all 3600 students were sending/receiving data continuously. In reality, not everyone is using the network all the time, and when they are, much of the traffic consists mostly of bursts, rather than sustained data transfers... So it's actually quite feasible for 3600 people to share 2 T1s, and much of the time the troughput is very good...

  • As mattdm pointed out in an early post, its "the imminent death of the internet" :-) slashtroll style.

    All the article talks about is bandwidth shaping by products like Packeteer [packeteer.com], who make a cool little box. I regularly put in packeteer boxes to shape bandwidth so legitimate customers get what they pay for, and the bandwidth hogs are throttled back to reasonable rates. Although the box can be configured as a firewall, it really shines in packet shaping. I can easily configure it to choke every flow from every user, then open up bigger pipes for legitimate applications. The whingey napster users still can DL their metallica, but it takes them longer than going out to buy the CD :-)

    The university mentioned in the article is doing just that, limiting napster without breaking it, which would have the students screaming at them for censorship.

    The tricks swb mentioned, like domainjacking, makes it tough for the (l)users to break your network, and gives the appearance of complying with corporate legal contracts. But the open nature of the internet still allows determined intelligent users to continue using the internet. Domainjacking is easily defeated by users who either stuff their own hosts file with the address of napster, or run yet another DNS server which ignores the 'jacked one, or tunnel around the firewall block.

    the AC
  • well, 1800 on one T1 might be really slow, 3600 on 2 might be slow too but less so, but 36000 on twenty t1s is gonna be almost useable. This is because most users will be doing very bursty things, so even though they'll want quite a bit of peak capacity -- so that the page loads quickly -- they really don't want that much bandwidth on average during the day.

    It would actually be interesting to see how much external bandwidth an average person uses during a working day. Does anyone have any info on this?

    Of course, I'm excluding people like myself who like to run X from home, or run any sort of trafic analysis countermeasures (cryptonuts, mostly) or who routinely suck in the whole kernel instead of the diffs... So I guess that's pretty much everyone but my mom.
  • so users on your network are prevented from using napster to trade music. but napster in itself is nothing, and an MP3 is not by definition illegal. It may be legit to block napster at work, since napster is not necessary for work, especially if it takes up 95% of available bandwidth. But the reasons you cite are not very logical unless you also forbid employees to use cassette recorders and pens (they can copy an entire book using just a pen, some paper and a little time!)

    //rdj
  • I did put it a little black-and-white... but here in europe companies can't just disallow their music(all music) because some entirely legal thing isn't to their liking. Especially record-companies. If a radio-station pays their dues for music, they can play music, whether BUMA/STEMRA (dutch organisation for collecting cash for music) wants them to or not. And luckily it isn't so easy for european employers to fire their employees, but that doesn't have anything to do with this.

    //rdj
  • >Downloading a huge software package, a bunch of
    >audio files, listening to streaming audio and
    >downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at
    >the same time.

    >Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...

    Well, subtract the big honkin ISO download...

    (but then who knows, I might change my mind about Mandrake and go go back to Red Hat. I only have CDs up to 6.1, and RH's @ 6.2 now, so...)

    ... and you *DO* get my typical computer useage; that's when I'm physically at the terminal, at least.

    Now, that's obviouslly gonna change over time. Once my server is up, so will be the bandwidth useage, especially when I'm logged in via X remotely. But once I'm done building my MP3 library...

    (I'm in the process of "converting" my entire CD collection (400+ discs) to MP3 format. Even with a (nearly) saturated connection, a 640Kbps connection and Napster/Gnutella is faster, easier, and more convinent than dragging the discs out and ripping them myself)

    ... that useage is gonna go down.

    But you see my point... yes? I'm ONE user on 640Kb dedicated to MYSELF, and it becomes inadaquate with annoying regularity, even with typical useage. In fact, a number of my friends and co-workers have mentioned similar situations to my own.

    >3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if
    >those 3600 users are doing what a typical student
    >would need to do for their schoolwork. It only
    >starts becoming inadequate if those students
    >start doing stuff that has nothing to do with
    >education, like downloading lots of music files,
    >or pron.

    Which would be all well and good, if the schools were providing that bandwidth FREE of any additional cost. But at my school at least, we had to pay something called a "technology fee" which was supposed to PAY FOR our bandwidth. Oh, and that's not even mentioning that you have to PAY *EXTRA* to live in the "wired" dorm...

    ... And now, even living in San Francisco, home of some of the most ridiculously high rents you've ever seen, when you add up my rent, utilities, AND my DSL connection; I am, in fact, paying *LESS* per month than I was the year I lived in the dorm.

    And in return for LESS money, I get MORE privacy, NO stupid rules, NO intrusive RAs and *MUCH* MORE bandwidth.

    So, ultimately, especially given the money that colleges charge for it, 3Mbps *IS* absurdly insufficent for 3600 students.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Just where the hell do you work? The bloody KGB???

    Really! Please tell us. I know sure as HELL that I'd never want to work for, or even grace with a resume, such a putridly dictatorial, big-brother-esque orginisation as you've described in your last couple of posts.

    >but all of these methods, even if they work, are
    >well beyond the skill level of the lusers here,
    >and even if it wasn't we're a lean enough
    >organization that everyone *should* have enough
    >work to do that by the time they got done beating
    >me at the job I get paid to do they'd get canned
    >for screwing off..

    Two points on this one...

    1)
    When you put in 10-12 (or more) hours a day, as mant geeks are wont to do, I certianly don't think it's out of line to take the occasional break to check personal email, read slashdot, listen to some music, etc... My employer agrees; and we have pretty much free reign so long as we get our work done. Sad that employers like yours exist who are not so enlightened. Who was it again that you work for, so I can avoid ever sending a resume?

    2)
    Now this is the odd bit...

    A) you expect that your geeks are smart enough to turn out quality code in a timely manner (despite what must be horrible morale, given your oppressive practices), yet you expect them to..

    B) be "lusers" who are too dumb to know how to do IP tunneling, use anon proxies, forge IP headers, etc...

    ???

    Who do you work for again. I hope I NEVER have to have ANY dealings with a company such as the one you've described.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Downloading a huge software package, a bunch of audio files, listening to streaming audio and downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at the same time.

    Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...

    Hell, I rarely saturate the 384 kbps line I use, and I download quite a bit myself.

    The trouble is that you are confusing your maximum use with your average use. I'd be willing to bet your average use is <50kbps.

    When you add more people to the pipe, how adequate it is depends on what the average person does. If the average person only downloads large files 1% of the time, then 640 Kbps will only seem marginally slower with fifty people than with one. And in fact, a 1 Mbps line with fifty people may well seem faster than a 640 Kbps line, depending on what those users are doing.

    3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if those 3600 users are doing what a typical student would need to do for their schoolwork. It only starts becoming inadequate if those students start doing stuff that has nothing to do with education, like downloading lots of music files, or pron.

    Yes, I know that some of those students will need to download Linux distributions. However, the number of those students that need to will be low. The number of students out of 3600 trying to download a distribution at any one time will likely be on the order of 1 or 2. That's fine for a 3600 Mbps line, as long as 800 other students aren't trying to simulataneously download the latest Metallica album.

  • If your ISP starts killing your packets, change ISP's. I wouldn't think an ISP like that is going to stay in business very long anyway.


    This sounds great now, but I worry about down the road. What happens when the RIAA gets some tech ignorant judge to rule that major ISP's have to use this kind of thing, in order to protect the recording industries intellectual property. It may sound far-fetched, but so does patenting hyper-links and being held liable for linking to a site with DeCSS, and those things happened.

    Still, the internet is all about file sharing. Hell, a web-page is a file. And it seems that it wouldn't take to much to hack something up that would confuse the filtering software. But for the average user, getting around this might be more difficult. Thankfully, that scenario is all hypothetical now.

  • This is the mispelling thread, right? Non sequitur, dude.

    Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

  • No, it's not. I decide what flows over my connection. if you don't like it, go get a new provider. this isn't real complicated.
  • did you know that theres some kind of governor on your car that limits you from driving over a certain speed? my mom's volvo tops out at 125, if I remember correctly.

    when I sell you software, I dont have to give you the source. I can, but I dont have to. and I can give you interface documentation or an API and documentation for that, but I dont have to.

    when I sell you a steak, you dont get the entrails of the cow.

    if I sell you bandwidth, I can set the terms of this sale to be ANYTHIGN I WANT. I dont want to serve you porn? fine. I want to limit the speed that your napster goes over the line? fine.

    there are limitations put on things that you purchase, whether they are built in limitations or limitations imposed after the fact. deal with it. if you dont like the limitations, buy another fuckign product. welcome to real life.
  • if I owned a t1 and I allowed other people to use it, I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users; I shuold also have the right to throttle their bandwidth or to delay their transmissions long enough to prevent congestion. and if they didn't like it, they could go somewhere else for their fuckign bandwidth.

    I really dont understand why so many people here find it surprising that the real world works this way.
  • I come to slashdot to get informed without the alarmist attitude and the manufactured headlines.

    "Could this be the end of the internet?" Bah.
    How about, "Companies improving methods to limit bandwidth" or something.

    Slashdot: save that headline for a relavant story, guys. You're sounding too much like the mass-media built-to-sell-more-copies drivel that abounds today. Write about stuff that might be interesting to geeks, and be accurate. That's all I want. I'll turn your pages and click your banners for that. Please don't try to play the creative-headline game. Or the tease-buzzword game.

    yeah, yeah, moderate me down. But you know you feel the same way. :-P
  • I thought this would make a nice song parody, but I didn't have time to make up tons of verses. So in true, slashdot spirit, I figure we could all come up with some

    It's the end of the Internet as we know it!
    9 o'clock surfing hour,
    Doubleclick -- hide and cower,
    hosts file, junkbust, cookiekill and hide!
    Microsft and antitrust,
    dot com's turn to rust,
    Lars' Urlich really sucks,
    look at our Dew-swilling, Pizza-eating, programmers' guts!


    ---
  • Let's not forget Altavista's 31337 Warez Search [altavista.com], which I discuss in my article Modern Technology and the Death of Copyright. [goingware.com]

    Interestingly, most of the hot software found in such boolean searches as:

    download AND crack AND photoshop AND word AND illustrator

    is on public webpages like freeyellow and geocities, and most of the sites are shut down before you get there. But for any shrink-wrap commercial software product you can name, it doesn't take more than an hour or two of searching to find a good download for it.

    It happens that Microsoft has a full-time staff doing searches such as these with their own spider to find stashes of Windows 2000; I understand they find and shut down something like 100 sites a day. (Sorry, I tried to find a news report about this to link to and couldn't.)

    Maybe Microsoft is able to minimize the impact of piracy this way, but I don't think they can completely eliminate it. Any normal software company simply doesn't have the resources to search out and elimate the warez like Microsoft tries to.

    How could anyone hope to control something as popularly appealing and easy to obtain and use as music files?

  • I worked at a colelge that was worse off (a single T1 line for over 1000 active systems, both student & staff used the same line).

    First I had a key & could let myself into the palce early (otherwise my boss might have had to get up 4 hours earlier than normal & come in at 5:30 am like me which had a snowballs chance in hell of happening). So I used to have a T1 to myself until students would arrive (& after I unlocked the doors for them) & man was that sweet... I used to do ~100 Mb downlaods & store them on zip at work before people would come in because they would take a couple minutes or so...

    Now students could not chat (ate to much bandwith), play games (was considered to eat to much bandwith), & could not download any real files (they were not given zip drives). & the network staff was required to enforce these rules, so very little of it happened. Oh btw we also couldn't let students view porn (to many female staff complaints & upset parents), so none of that either.

    On the other hand the staff refused to cooperate & would force the dean to allow them to do whatever they wanted as logn as they didn't damage the network (that we could prove). I watched a couple of teachers play Quake (none of our machiens had 3d graphics cards, so anything to much better was out), search for porn (god we did *.gif/*.jpg/*.mpg searches over network file storage every so often & teachers have some sick ass fetishes... yuck...), download huge files (saw a teacher dl all of a redhat install & copy it on to a CD from the staff CD-R), & chat with anyone (you don't want to even hear some of those stories) all at prime hours (bewteen 10 am & 2 pm when the most people are at the campus using the labs). Heck 120 virii infections happened that had nothing to do with stuff the students were doing, but still the dean refused to restrict them.

    In the case of a network like ours was I can see very good reasons for using this software & in fact it would be a legal way to enforce these things on those damn staff members to.

    Btw if I sound slightly hostile to the general staff it's because I am. They used to put us down as 'just students' when they couldn't do half of what we were doing & gave us no respect while we had to play nice. They didn't ever earn my respect as no one should be treated like we were in a professional enviroment (btw I worked their longer than some teachers who were normally the owrst offenders).
  • The content of the article might be interesting enough to have it posted on Slashdot, but I think the reaction here was a little more extreme than necessary. The RIAA and the MPAA are not scared of file sharing in general, they're scared of piracy of material that would otherwise be immensely profitable for them. So they will go after any tool which they think specifically aids such piracy, regardless of whether or not that is the intent of the tool. Does Napster qualify? Sure. DeCSS? Not really, but they think it does. FTP in general? No. The crucial difference is the word "specifically". MiniDiscs, to take another example, are superior in sound quality to MP3s, but noone's going after MiniDisc player manufacturers. Why? Because noone thinks it specifically aids piracy. Now. Do I think it's possible that at some future point organizations like the RIAA are going to go after anything which aids piracy in any fashion? Sure, it's possible. Do I think they'll succeed? Not a chance in hell. Napster has limited appeal. File transfer has much broader appeal, and so anyone who tries to take that away is going to find a much larger set of opponents than the RIAA is finding in its attempts to suppress tools like Napster.
  • Well, that sounds nice, but what do you do when a site bombards yours with spam? Or "communication" consisting of forged ICMP bombs?

    Communication necessarily involves two parties, so claiming traffic is "yours" is a mistake. I might agree with a revision to your idea which says that communication cannot be "censored" between two, er, consensting adults.
  • When [PacketHound] is in blocking mode, it kills unwanted activity by issuing a reset packet to the requesting machine; the user sees only a "connection reset by host" message.

    This sounds like those DoS attacks where you can send a forged ICMP "host unreachable" packet to disconnect someone from, say, IRC. Last time I checked, though, this didn't work with the linux TCP/IP stack. Anybody know more about this?

  • Those guys have an hack for bandwidth management - they alter the TCP traffic by messing with the ACK sequence numbers, thereby making the sending end think its previous traffic hasn't been delivered yet, which causes the sender to throttle back. This is rather intrusive.

    This is an old controversy. I was the first to work seriously on Internet congestion and originated packer re-ordering in routers. [fh-koeln.de] There was a worry at the time, mostly from some BBN people, that being able to do this was in a sense, evil. Their concern was that as long as nobody could regulate traffic flows, charging for bandwidth wasn't possible. Cheaper bandwidth made most traffic shaping unnecessary, but now and then, when some new application causes a traffic spike, the issue comes back. Over the last 15 years, cheap bandwidth has always won. This will probably continue until everybody has enough for a few channels of streaming HDTV.

    Still, Gnutilla is a bandwidth hog. It looks to me like its directory system is an O(N^2) traffic generator, because it uses a flooding algorithm. Somebody needs to fix that. Soon. Directory traffic should be minimal, and content traffic should mostly be local. Most of the traffic is probably on a small fraction of the content, and that can be handled very efficiently if done right. Gnutilla should be using less bandwidth than MP3.com.

  • You totally missed my point. People started ragging on BBS's because they didn't know what was going on in the news, but nobody in power really did much to impede on us using them, that's what I'm saying dude. They want to do that here. There's a lot of hype around the net, and everyone wants a piece of the action, and part of that mean that people with real power are going to take notice and try to shut us down. Chill man.
  • Remember the BBS days? People understood what was happening in their system then. The whole system was about sharing. It wasn't as fast as the internet, but you were more likely to find what you wanted. This is an example of what is wrong with the internet. Too many idiots. Everybody who doesn't even know how to turn on a computer wants to be in control of it and tack cyber onto anything that they say to do so (i.e. "Become a cyberwhiz"). I think that if you want to talk about something, and control it, you should at least understand it enough to understand what you are saying and the full implications of it. I avoid being wrong by keeping my mouth shut when I don't know what I am talking about, perhaps some of these people who want to regulate the whole net should do the same (no offense to anyone in particular).
  • ...restrictions over what ports/protocols could be used.

    One can always encapsulate a banned protocol in an allowed protocol. FTP could be encapsulated in SMTP if it came to that. Inefficiently, etc, yes, but possible. I have successfully run SLIP and PPP over telnet connections before. Also one can "hide" an MP3 in what appears to be C source code. There is almost always a way around restrictions. Ever wonder why B-level security systems (mandatory access control and multi-level security) are so complex? It is hard to stop people from sending information. And then there are covert channels and all sorts of hard to detect and hard to stop methods of sending info that someone wants to suppress.

  • file shareing software will evolve much faster than blocking software will, which side do you think has the best/brightest/most people on it's side?

    That's the whole point, isn't it? Why is it that these things always get the whole community all fired up and worried? We can fight it, we know this. Yes, it's a bad thing that we HAVE to fight it, but at least we CAN. Finkployd got it right: we have the best and brightest (if not the most, then at least the most dedicated) people on our side. Even IF the big shots decided to go with packet blocking, there will be ways around it. If not, we'll find ways around it. Nothing like this ever lasts. It's almost foolish of us to get worried over nothing.

    --Forager.

  • "...I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users..."

    Isn't that called Facism?

    Umm, no, that's called ownership. If it's his company, and his T1 transmission equipment, he has the right to set usage terms, including terms covering the types of data services that will be delivered to the customer. As long as the customer has an alternative (another provider), there's no fascism involved. BTW, this is why monopolies are considered a bad thing (even when their products don't crash five times a day :)

    In practice, of course, no ISP that restricted access in this way would last very long, unless they were doing it "for the children." I can see this sort of thing fitting in nicely with other schemes to restrict "harmful" or inappropriate content for kids ("If we can't weed out that 'sinful' music, we'll block out all music downloads!"). So eventually people may be asking for this kind of service.

  • "...if you are running at low priority and are guaranteed not to be draining bandwidth from important applications, who would care?"

    Lars would.

    Regardless of who would care, its irritating that anyone would try to say that my data is less important than their's is, and thus should be sent to Japan before I get the packets. I would think that it is in everyone's best interest, in a technical sense, for all data to spend as little time in transit as possible, thus freeing bandwidth for more data.

  • I couldn't resist... :)

    That's vile, it starts with a monopoly trial,
    Rights to free thought, and public files.
    Eye of a mastermind, listen to his work burn.
    World serves its own needs.
    Dummy, don't you know what the web breeds?
    Fear, fight, downright hype.
    It's a conspiracy undercutting all that the world holds dear -
    No fear. We'll stop 'em yet.
    See how far they get.
    "You vitriolic, unpatriotic, think-you-know-it-all kids!"

    It's the end of the internet as we know it...
    It's the end of the internet as we know it...
    It's the end of the internet as we know it, and I feel fine...

    The other night I dreamt of wires,
    Cut apart and lit afire,
    Microsoft again conspires against Linus T's desires.
    LinuxFest blown amess, MacOS and the rest.
    Lines stripped, bandwidth crippled, kill slashdot, battle, uh oh...
    This means no surf, off my turf, Bill Gates is nothing worth.
    Community, community, community of lies.
    Offer me websolutions, offer me software alternatives, and I decline!

    It's the end of the internet as we know it...
    It's the end of the internet as we know it...
    It's the end of the internet as we know it, and I feel fine...

    :)

    I admit, it's pretty weak and lame (and perhaps uninformed), but I gave it a shot! ;)

    -heidiporn

  • All this amounts to is ridiculousness similar to laws against suicide. Is it possible to punish someone who wants to die-- I mean "Gosh my life sucks and now there are more reasons why it sucks?"

    Now, having said that, I will don my asbestos suit. With each passing post of this nature, the doomsayers and rebels and freedom fighters jump out with "How can anyone POSSIBLY regulate ME?" It can be done and will be done. Court decisions are overturned. Laws are changed (that's why we in the US still have a Congress). And it is damn hard to lobby successfully for something that has obvious legal problems. Just as getting rid of scheduling of narcotics will solve the drug problem (trivial solution), making illicit material legal on the internet will cause the problem to go away. That won't happen. Come out of fantasy land. The honeymoon will be over iff we don't do something to police the problem from within. Only then can we get laws in our favor. We are not in a vacuum. Our actions have reprocusions. Take responsibility people!

    After reading the article, I have no qualms with some of the "solutions" (read adhesive bandage) that mete out bandwidth by application. I have no problem with people policing their private networks. I have always believed that if we as an online community do not start policing our actions from within, someone else will do it for us--and none of us will like it. I mean, there is no inalienable right in the US to Internet (just as there is no right to a television, camcorder, computer, etc) (contrast with the ideas of the new President/King of Syria).

    In short, so that everyone is minimally satisfied, the ridiculous concept of "Blue Laws" should be instituted. Some of the products mentioned in the article are a start in that direction. It only takes several idiots to commit some ridiculous crime that pisses off the wrong person then hide behind the first amendment to really screw up a good thing.

    The Free Kevin movement is a good example. Whether or not he should have been freed, he managed to piss off the wrong people. Those that disclaimed "Free Kevin" were merely exercising their first amendment rights. However, like it or not, Mr. Mitnik's antics managed to make people aware the subterfuge possible by an interconnected world. This is what landed him his sentence. These antics, while (arguably) harmless (like the DDoS debacle earlier this year), affected pocketbooks--Da Benjis if you will.

    Before I ramble too much more, let me state, for the record:

    Napster does traffic in (currently) illegal material as well as legal material.

    Squatter's rights as a means of enforcement will never be tolerated by the government.

    If something illegal is currently occurring somewhere, it is only a matter of time before the government does something (either regulate by denying service or by taking a substantial take on the profits).

    Therefore, if we would like to keep our perceived internet rights, we better clean the place up. And soon.

    The Internet no longer exists in a vacuum (for better or worse). What transpires here (cyberspace) affects everyone, whether or not they even know what the internet is. We as a community are on borrowed time. And if you don't think so, ask yourself what keeps the Internet going? Government regulated industries throughout the world. What would it take for these governments to start regulating the service, say, to the OFF position rather than trying to foil the unfoilable trafficker in illicit material?

  • Your scenario is worse than what I was thinking. To CYA, ISPs may reduce to the lowest common denominator thereby grabbing the worst of the worst of global legislations. Or worse, the US slapping some of these packet filters customs-style on the trunks at either side of the country. So your packet will have to go through customs to get to points of origin outside of your country. Generally, I use US sites (with the occaisional funet ftp). For all intents and purposes, the US does have the power to regulate my internet experience--though not the entire internet. I am being selfish in my post above. I would rather my internet experience continue status quo rather than gamble on idiots in congress, blowhards from 1600 Pennsylvania ave., and disinterested justices.

    My father ran an 31337 board in the early to mid eighties on a wonderful Commode (sic) 64 and 128. I thought that was well and good and the thought never occurred to me to police my actions online since I grew up in an 31337 household. We always had the latest updates to Fast Hack 'em (Let's see how many people know what I'm talking about), monster Warez lists, 20 Meg hard drive, and close to 1500 flippies (homemade with a hole puncher). I didn't see the full ramifications of what I had been doing for close to 20 years until recently. I am trying to stay neutral and understand the vacuum that existed those many years ago is vanishing and the sound of lawyers rushing in is deafening.

    Let's take the Warez, pr0n, mp3s, and everything else back underground. Make it extremely difficult to traffic in illicit materials. The only way to do that is for the 31337 of the world to go back to the way it was done before. Go into hiding. Don't advertise. Restrict the 31337 areas. Just as dope smuggling rings that get large are busted, don't let your 31337 circle get too large.

    Drug dealers (outside of inner cities) generally don't hang out a shingle. Neither should Warez sites. I don't think the problem can be solved and by forcing a showdown, everyone loses. Instead of priding yourself on your collection of broken links, pride yourself on how many links work. To do that, you have to keep a very low profile. You want votes on t50? Why? The mob figured out a long time ago that you can thrive by keeping a very low profile (unless they have purchased the local gov't). I don't think any w4r3z d00d own any government officals.

    Please, let's stop flaunting these (arguably) minor tortes before those with the power (and that is definitely not those who are 31337) make those tortes felonies--like what our good friend Mitnik did for us.

  • Exactly. "The end of the internet?" Uh ok. This title to this news story indeed does sound like trolling.

    The internet is too important to businesses to simply go away. Commerce seems to dictate the way that laws go nowadays, unfortunately. I will be interested to see how businesses try to stop information sharing among private users while still keeping the connections open between themselves and their credit-card using buyers.

    Banning FTP? Ridiculous. If any governmental entity attempted to ban FTP, people would simply develop a new standard which operated on a different port.
  • Well, thanks for taking my typo and making it into jargon...

    Incidentally, do you know where "malapropism" (to correct YOUR typo ;-)) came from? A 17th century play (can't remember the name) featuring a certain Ms. Malaprop, who constantly spouted non sequiters like this. Anyway, a little literary sidebar...
  • 640K ought to be enough for anybody. ;-)

    --
  • News clip at eleven!

    I am *so* sick of "End of Internet" postings, I have been seeing them for fifteen years now.

  • Non sequitur, dude.

    "I said quod erat demonstrandum, baby
    Ooh, you speak French!" - "Airhead," Thomas Dolby

    This proves my law about spelling flames, which is that all spelling flames have to include a spelling error, and at least half of all grammar flames have to spell it "grammer."

  • This is already happening with SPAM. If a large volume of SPAM is coming from a particular domain or service provider, other networks will refuse to peer with that service provider or accept mail from that domain. There is already precendent for locking people out of the Internet if the violate the prevailing standard of Internet ethics, and thus removing the offending content from the public Internet.

    Lenny
  • Couldn't something like this be defeated with Steganographic encryption? (encrypting a file inside another file, so that the cover file is still functional?)

    My spelling may be way off here, because I don't really follow it, but I have a program that will automatically split a file into specified file types of specified sizes, and build HTML indexes for them so they can be easily downloaded. For example, a 600k bitmap, that appears to be a single black pixel, but contains 1/6th of an MP3.

    Perhaps if a packet filter identified the file by taking samples of the content, it would allow a file like this to be sent?
  • Yeah, but the net is just now garnering the attention of the "BIG BUSINESS/BIG GOVERNMENT" (usually considered the same thing as one is in the pocket of the other). As something realatively new, the net is still fairly "free" (as in speech). But given time, as is already starting to happen, business and government will get their grimy paws on it and mutate it into what they really want.

    This has been said before, so I can't take credit for it. What the big guys really want is a T.V. with a buy button. This is absolutely the truth. They don't want the Internet to stay open and free (as in speech). They want it to become just another marketing tool. And the government wants to be sure that they also get a cut out of it. So, new net taxes and extra sales taxes, and ___________ taxes. It's just a matter of time.

    While I truly hope you are the one that is right, I fear that you aren't. Big business and the government must control and regulate anything that people enjoy. If people enjoy it, there has to be a way to scrape some money out of it right? Too bad, the net was so much fun about two years ago. Now it's just as ridiculous as going to the local mall and watching the teenagers get into fights about who has the coolest hair style/color while trying to fight your way into whatever store you came for.

    It was fun while it lasted, but the net community needs to face the reality that business will not let it live as it is.
  • On 26 Jun 2000, bughunter wrote:
    Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.

    Not too likely. I fail to see how this is any different from alt.binaries.* on Usenet. Plenty of companies and universities no longer carry them (or any newsgroups for that matter) for the exact same reason sites now wish to restrict bandwidth used by Napster: It uses up an inordinate amount of bandwidth at the expense of those who wish or need to do real work. If this is the monumental civil rights violation you make it out to be, why aren't you up in arms about office dwellers and university students not getting their Usenet pr0n?

  • My biggest problem with these new products is not that they will prevent Napster or Gnutella or RealAudio from functioning.

    Quite the converse. My fear is that file sharing, media streaming, bandwidth hogging applications will not be stopped. The developers of these applications are under no obligation to stick to their current easy to recognise ports and protocols.

    This is a treand that has already begun thanks to mis-configured firewalls. I maintain the code for a tcp based client/server communication protocol used by my companies products. When choosing port numbers for the servers I cannot choose whether to use ports between 0 and 1023 or 1024 and up based on any criteria more rational than "how much chance does this port have of successfully negotiating any firewalls between the client and the server?".

    I am under a lot of pressure to simply throw in the towel and recast the entire protocol as HTML over HTTP so it can at least escape networks that have a proxy. My boss unfortunately has heard of XML - I can see the end comming.

    In the long run it seems that all protocols will converge to running over port 80 looking enough like HTML that these so called smart filtering firewalls can't tell the difference.

    And that will be the bad thing. Every grey featureless protocol looking like every other grey featureless protocol. Bloated with loads of headers all telling lies. A great loss to the richness that the internet once was or could have been.

    I still imagine a world where many different protocols exist, each suited to its task. Sadly this seems to be becomming more and more of a pipe dream.

  • With each passing post of this nature, the doomsayers and rebels and freedom fighters jump out with "How can anyone POSSIBLY regulate ME?" It can be done and will be done. Court decisions are overturned. Laws are changed (that's why we in the US still have a Congress).

    Perhaps you are forgetting a slew of amendments written to protect us from this regulation.

    The 4th Amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

    No company has the right to police our personal hard drives, and the government can only do so when there is probable cause for some specific crime and when a search warrant has been issued.

    The 6th Amendment In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

    This means that in the event that the government does get a search warrant for the materials on someone's hard drive, that someone has a right to know for what reason his hard drive has been seized and who his accusers are. Never mind these bullshit NetPD lists.

    Now, the record companies may point out this phrase from the 5th Amendment:nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. To that, I counter with the 9th Amendment:The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Ergo, the loss of profits [read:pennies] does not justify the clampdown on file sharing that the RIAA would have you believe is utterly justified.

    Something illegal is currently occurring somewhere, it is only a matter of time before the government does something (either regulate by denying service or by taking a substantial take on the profits)

    Remember, the 12th Amendment allows the people to elect their Senators. The power to vote is a power we would do well to exercise.

  • Exactly right. From a business point of view my company has the right to re-prioritize or shutdown any non-business related activities. As stated in the appropriate use policy. Nothing in the article leads me to believe that the Internet is in danger - be serious! However, the use of some networks is a privilege, not a right. Corporations have the right to enforce that.
  • does this seem idiotic to anyone else?

    how in the world would any companies manage to actually stop file sharing? i mean, suing napster and running them out of businees and thus forcing their server to go down is one thing, but the is no legal action anyone could take to stop other protocols. and even so, how would they do it? the major backbones would all have to have restrictions over what ports/protocols could be used. given how even script kiddies seem to ger around things like napster bans and whatnot, it seems like companies would have to invest more manpower (and thus money) in keeping people from xfering files than it would be worth... even if they are the companies being hurt by piracy. This story looks like so much typical slashdot FUD. oh no, your rights are being taken away. big brother is watching everything you do. yeah, right. as if i'm important enough. c'mon, this is ridiculous.

  • Just as auto-racing pushed the limits of cars, creating faster, safer cars. Just as the massive amounts of people wanting to fly created bigger and safer planes. The main problem is that the internet backbone and the connections people have are way to slow if the internet were faster, if everyone was running at crazy speeds this wouldn't be an issue because people swapping files wouldn't be eating up corporate bandwith. I don't think the whole issue here is the recording industry. If the schools weren't so strapped for bandwidth they probably wouldn't mind so much, they probably wouldn't notice.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:53AM (#975763)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Oh my god... (Score:3)

    by funkman ( 13736 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:35AM (#975764)
    They killed the Internet.
    You bastard!

  • I don't see a problem (Score:3)

    by robwicks ( 18453 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:40AM (#975765) Homepage
    These people are allocating bandwidth and monitoring their own network. I think that is pretty legal. If you get a service agreement with your provider that they will not do that, then you have legal recourse against them if they implement something like this. I actually would prefer a college to handle Napster, Gnutella, and other programs in this way rather than by blocking ports and whatnot. Haven't ISPs been managing bandwidth already?

  • Not as bad... (Score:3)

    by Wah ( 30840 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:43AM (#975766) Homepage Journal
    ..as the write up made it sound.

    The article just covers some of the more interesting developements as we move to a distributed media environment.

    Media Enforcer, written by a white-wearing blackhat it would seem, is a tool for tracking the popularity of media files. Actually fingering individuals is silly, IMHO, but tracking mass usage is a very useful tool in attracting advertisers with real income models.

    The bandwidth shaping tools will most likely become a bit more commonplace. You don't want the kids dl'ing mp3s to interfere with your streamed-on-demand newscasts now do you? Kids comps get 128k, dad gets 2mbs. That's seems like normal evolution of bandwidth to me.

    I really didn't see any need of fear-mongering from this article. That'll come when TW implements a hardware solution in all their routers to give the highest priority to AOL packets.
    --

  • Re:FTP vs Napster/Gnutella (Score:3)

    by Spasemunki ( 63473 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @11:36AM (#975767) Homepage
    It is all about visibility. I seem to remember some article in a local publication talking about piracy, and the growth of an Internet "underground" operating using a system known only as "FTP". They were really sounding like FTP was something that a cracker cobbled together in their basement six months ago to swap copies of that dangerous "Doom" game with. Casual users (and most of the casual technology news media) do not drift through FTP sites, but they can wander around on the web until they find something. The profile and ease of use of Gnutella and Napster are the only thing that have made them cause a stir.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

  • Re:WTF? (Score:3)

    by ceswiedler ( 165311 ) <chris@swiedler.org> on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:40AM (#975768)
    100% agreed. This article is typicle of the "Ask Slashdot" questions these days. Some idiot sends in a "hot" question which really has no support, and Slashdot posts it. I can't rememberit the last Ask Slashdot post which was about something worthwhile.

  • Obsolete but powerful. (Score:3)

    by saider ( 177166 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @12:02PM (#975769)
    The reason recording companies whine is because they want to be a middleman. They are obsolete, no longer needed...Remember if a business plan is obsolete, it should die off and make room for improved systems that will benefit people for less effort.

    I agree, but try telling that to the fat, wealthy record executive. His fortune is built on this system and he, sure as shit happens, is NOT going to tear down his own empire. Do you think he really cares what the people think? Those guys have the idea in their head that they can tell us what we want. Unfortunately, that idea is not too far from the mark, given the popularity of groups like Kid Rock and N'Sync.

    Money is power. If you propose a system, no matter how wonderful, if it does not generate money, it has no power. The file sharing utilities are used by a very small minority of users, and since the recording industry currently has the power, they are using it to squash this new medium.

    But progress is a cruel fact of life. Eventually, recording industries will be "selected" out. The smart ones will evolve into something else, and the inflexible will make the transition to the new model as painful as possible as they are sent to the great beyond kicking and screaming. Either this, or there will be a new digital tyranny imposed on us. It all depends how the general public (with their spending money) reacts. The public holds the power, but is largely ignorant of the new technology. The recording industry will try to sell their method. We must sell the alternatives.



  • Re:Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:4)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @11:12AM (#975770) Journal
    I was going to post a complaint, but then I saw yours. I'm sure the Slashdot staffer meant well, but this was such poor headline generation that, were *I* the executive editor of the site, I'd pull that staffer from article-posting until he/she showed better judgement.

    Slashdot: you guys need better QC on your editors. This headline/alert was just blatantly wrong and, if you want to retain your credibility, you'd better start taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again.

    Considering that credibility is really all you have, you're being awfully careless with it.

  • Not enough bandwith for 3,600 students. (Score:4)

    by havaloc ( 50551 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:35AM (#975771) Homepage
    Come on, serving 3,600 students with two T1 lines? Who are they kidding? I bet their bandwidth was limited even before the whole Napster thing.

  • Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:4)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:33AM (#975772)
    Another poster mentioned that a couple of the software packages only allocate bandwidth away from Napster-like applications.

    But 3600 people shareing two lousy T1's?!?!?!?

    Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!

    I have a 640/640Kb DSL connection (equivelent to just over a third of a single T1, IIRC) TO MYSELF at home, and I STILL saturate that connection from time to time.

    Just last night actually, I ran out of bandwidth. Between downloading the latest Mandrake ISO for my soon to be functioning again web, file, and mail server, grabbing a handful of MP3s, listening to a realaudio broadcast of a radio station I like but get no reception on my stereo, downloading the new X-Men trailer, and casual websurfing on top of all that (Flash and Shockwave sites suck a good bit of bandwidth as well), and you can easily saturate 640Kb! Subtract the ISO download for the average traffic, and you STILL get a hearty chunk of bandwidth. But add the server, and online gameing, and you're right bach up there.

    And I'm not even running that server yet! AND I pay the telco a *LOT* less for that connection than I payed to live in the dorms back at school!

    We're not just talking about free speech here, we're talking sheer stupidity! Just what kind of neanderthal crams 3600 people onto a pair of T1s? If 640Kbps is inadaquate for ONE user, how the HELL is 3Mbps sufficent for 3600???

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Re:Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:4)

    by VAXman ( 96870 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:44AM (#975773)

    It smacks of unnecessary alarmism designed to generate message traffic... Trolling, almost.

    Correct. What you need to understand is that the Slashdot editors make millions of dollars from stories like this. They do not understand the issues they are discussing, but they know when they put up articles about hot topics, that it will line their pockets even further from all of the click throughs.

    Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.

    Incorrect. The internet data lines are owned by private corporations who can do whatever they want and put whatever restrictions they want on them. There is no free speech guaranteed on the internet, since the internet media is not publically owned (like the airwaves, or street corners are).

  • Re:Evil? (Score:4)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:52AM (#975774)
    Now for a decent rant and rave... ...And most of the reasons for Napster being evil is because it is depriving the bands out of money from lost record sales...

    Any good rant deserves a good nit-pick.

    The reason Napster is being "evil" is because they are (imagined to be) making money, by exploiting IP without sharing a slice with the creators of the product. If Napster had started out by drawing up contracts with the big media whores^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompanies, they would have been in good shape.

    Napster lawyers had to know (unless they're idiots) that these lawsuits would be coming, but they decided that the company would be easier to start if they got it off the ground first, and settled the license issues later. Napster might shut down if the get bitchslapped too hard, but I'm willing to bet that they will eventually pony up, just like MyMP3 did.

    All this means almost nothing to MP3 warez kiddies, who will probably all be using Gnutella to collect their Kid Rock "songs" by then anyway.

  • Re:WTF? (Score:4)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:04AM (#975775)
    ...typicle of the "Ask Slashdot" questions these days.

    Heh heh.

    Your lazy spelling resulted in a great malipropism to coin as a jargon term!

    From now on, I'm going to refer to any tired, over-reported and meaningless article as a "typicle".

  • Definitely a problem.. (Score:5)

    by Mike Hicks ( 244 ) <hick0088@tc.umn.edu> on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:51AM (#975776) Homepage Journal
    Yes, this is a problem. The University of Minnesota nearly adopted a no-SYNs policy for the residence halls, where all SYN packets would be blocked. Fortunately, there was a group of individuals who noticed that there were many `legal' services that would break. Identd would be broken, preventing many people from using IRC. Any sort of net phone software would probably stop working (unless they used UDP or something). Even ICQ would have probably stopped working. The staff at UMN is pretty smart, and it's pretty surprising that they even suggested doing that...

    Anyway, I am getting concerned about cable and DSL companies that want to take similar policies. I know that many companies scan their subscribers' computers looking for anything remotely troublesome. You could probably get your connection shut off for even having identd listening on an FTP port, even if in.ftpd or whatever is not installed on your system.

    I know that bandwidth is an issue, but it will always be an issue.. I think you could justifiably block a service for a certain amount of time, until your bandwidth supply is enhanced, but they should always be temporary things.

    Of course, one thing that my family's cable provider (@home) does is limit upstream bandwidth to some pretty low numbers. I think it's sitting at 112kbps right now. Certainly, that's still a pretty good speed, but it does have an impact...
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
    Stop the MPAA [opendvd.org]

  • Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! (Score:5)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:31AM (#975777) Homepage
    Hey look, there's a jargon file entry for this:
    Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! [tuxedo.org]

    --

  • The packetshaper and packethound devices aren't nearly the threat this /. article makes them out to be. It smacks of unnecessary alarmism designed to generate message traffic... Trolling, almost. First of all, these devices are hardware, and that means it ain't free, and so it won't "take over" the net. Second, all a qualified hacker/coder needs is intent to defeat this kind of system; I could propose three strategies right away and I've only allocated a fraction of my attention to it. Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:43AM (#975779)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Fight illiteracy in America! (Score:5)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:40AM (#975780)
    Learn to read. You fucking dunderheads. The article is about companies and schools blocking access to Napster or trying to save their bandwidth for something that is important. I go to a JC that has two T1's hooked up to the main campus. If you've ever used a T1 all by yourself you might think it is a rather fast little connection. Spread said connection out over an entire campus and you've got the slowest piece of shit ever. My schools is one of those that can't afford to have a bunch of neanderthals running Napster on lab computers. A semester or two ago one of our projects required we get some code from the teacher's webserver at another school. We only had three computers active yet had lots of trouble connecting to the server, then when we finally did get through we were getting a 1.5k download and the .tar was 3 megs. It turns out a bunch of people over in the lab were downloading MP3s and a couple were playing Quake2. Was it the end of the Internet? No but it sure did prove a point. People in the labs wasting money by chatting and downloading MP3s are something that definitely needs to stop. Not all schools can afford an OC-192, neither can busineses. Many businesses have ISDN's that while fairly speedy are charged by the byte for transfers. If you're playing a game or using Napster, not only are you wasting time but you're costing the company money. I'm all for bringing a Zip disk with your favorite MP3s and listening to them while you work. Don't get your fucking panties in a bunch when someone tells you how to use something they own or are paying for.

  • Legitimate use in controlling private networks (Score:5)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:17AM (#975781)
    This is a legitimate tool in private networks. I work in an industry that is signatory to intellectual property agreements with the music industry among others and we have a legal obligation to abide by their usage requirements. This means no napster for anyone. And yet we've got many people who want to use it in spite of their employers obligations *and* their own interest in not seeing their employer sued or lose the ability to license said I.P., which would cripple half our business.

    Our strategy for suppressing napster is tough firewalling, user education, as well as what I call "domainjacking" -- making my nameservers primary for off-limits domains (opening www.napster.com gets you the copyright section of our computer policy). Domainjacking coupled with restrictions on what nameservers you can query is very effective as lots of these types of apps have hostnames coded into them that will now never resolve properly.

    There are many examples like this where businesses have an obligation to their shareholders, their employees, customers or others to constrain the flow of information they have. It used to be easy to block stuff, but with the advent of gnutella, freenet, etc it's gotten much, much more difficult.

    Having tools and techniques to block these applications is important to those of us that have to defend the legal security of our private networks.

  • FTP vs Napster/Gnutella (Score:5)

    by LordOmar ( 68037 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:44AM (#975782) Homepage
    I got into this discussion with a friend some time ago, about How gnutella could be touted as a legit peice of bussiness software because it does not *exclusivley* restrict itself to mp3's and that by Napster pandering to the music crowd has brought itself under fire... Of course we both have knowledge of neumerous FTP servers from where we can get just about anything we want. The issue is this, Napster (and even guntella) are high visibility, there have been prominent news stories and articles about these programs, and once the public becomes aware (at large) of something like this, sure as hell, someone is not going to like it. FTP has been around longer then I've been working with cmputers, but it doesn't have the publicity that Napster does (maybe it's needs a better publicity agent..), it also is used legitimatley by as many people who use it for nefarious purposes..(if not more). Those who NEED an "idiot box" client such as napster or gnutella to get what they are looking for will lose out, but to the literate computer users, well, we won't be very inconvenienced at all.

    As gfor shutting down the internet... well microsoft claims it would hurt the economy if we just broke them up...

    peanuts compared to the damage that would be done by shutting down the internet...now where'd I put that copy of Wildcat BBS...
  • I agree Cliff seems to be trolling here. (why don't we get mod points for front page? i digress) I would however like to point out a couple of facts that are standard operating procedure for the 'net:

    a) It's their hardware and their data connection. They are entitled to do whatever they please with it. If they choose to block traffic I want, too bad. I can choose to vote with my dollars. Anyway, before you cry heresy and mark this flamebait, I would like to point out that this is _exactly_ the argument a sysadmin makes when blocking spam. The H/W is theirs and they don't have to relay for you.

    b) They ain't made no router big enough to pass multi-gigabit backbone traffic and filter packets at the same time. Therefore, They ain't no fucking way they can cut off napster and your other favorite apps at the backbone (but please, if you are one of those "pseudointellectius" types, do continue to say draconian, I understand it is a necessary part of your diet :).

    I believe point b) entirely mitigates further discussion on this topic. Go home...there's nothing to see here.

  • Try reading the article! (Score:5)

    by kevin42 ( 161303 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:32AM (#975784)
    Did you even read the article? It's not talking about banning any file sharing, it's talking about allocating bandwidth. If all it does is lower the priority for Napster or other bandwidth hogs, who can complain?

  • Re:Try reading the article! (Score:5)

    by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:20AM (#975785) Homepage
    Which, again, returns to the idea of encryption to hide the contents of a packet. Or designing a protocol to look like an existing protocol that's highly accepted. There's always some way around. :)

    And I, like you, am skeptical that they can really do what they claim. I'm curious what kind of heuristics a software package like this would need to employ to quickly and effectively block packets with a low error rate. After all, the failure of various software packages to effectively classify network flows based on content (for the purpose of QoS) shows how difficult it is to do something like this. Simple pattern matching ain't gonna do the job, and more complex heuristics would still be error prone, and less efficient. How do you identify a Napster packet from any other, which simply contains two 16-bit shorts with a command and length, and a payload? Search for two sets of 16-bit shorts at the start of a packet which are within a given range? What happens if I happen to be transferring a binary file that looks like that? Do I get blocked? In other words, this ain't an easy job. :)

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