[geeks] P2P Monitoring / Mitigation

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, der Mouse wrote:

>> Determining if the traffic is music versus movies would be
>> cost-prohibitive (and near impossible?) so it would be easier to just
>> block all/most of it.
>
> Especially since the distinction *should* be legal versus illegal,

I don't know that I agree with this.  There are plenty of sorts of
traffic that are legal but would take a secondary priority to traffic
for legitimate research.

> The only relevance I can see is that if you do (by any means) put a
> significant dent in the illegal traffic, then, if Bill's estimate is
> anywhere near correct, you'll alleviate the bandwidth-hogging issue
> correspondingly.

Yes, exactly.

> Of course, that's not much help if someone seeding all the *BSD ISO
> torrents is what's blowing out your bandwidth. :-)  If bandwidth is
> the problem, I'd suggest addressing it as a bandwidth problem.

Well, again.  If this is the problem, the university may want to
consider hosting a mirror (which they can throttle to something that
won't eat their connection) or telling those involved to sod off.  If
there isn't enough bandwidth to go around, things not directly to
coursework shouldn't be what's consuming the pipe--well-meaning or not.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "There is no such thing as a short of reserves...
Elgin, TX         |  one bank can have a problem...the Fed can print
USA               |  money, there is no shortage."
.                 |     --Jim Glassman, US Economist, JPMorgan Chase