Re: [TCLUG:14628] RE: Napster

[Troy Johnson <john1536@tc.umn.edu>]

"Eric M. Hopper" wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:06:31AM -0600, Troy Johnson wrote:
> > Tim,
> > I think you are doing the right thing.  If it somehow becomes easy to
> > throttle Napster bandwidth, then maybe it is time to _consider_ it,
> > but as it is now, cut it off at the knees.  Don't make routing packets
> > your full time job, and make the network fulfill it's mission.  Keep
> > up the good work and have a fabulous day,
>         And what is the mission?  Presumably, for a school network, I
> would assume that it's ensuring that students have access to the things
> they need to to learn.  Doesn't that include Napster?

That is a question you have to ask yourself. My answer is no, your
answer may be entirely different, as might Tim's. 

>         It is hard to see how downloading songs all day is really a
> learning experience, but setting up Napster and getting your first few
> songs is.  Blocking prevents even that.
> 
>         IMHO, Napster is just as deserving as a distribution download.
> If you caught someone downloading ten different distributions of Linux
> and burning them onto CDs, would you block their access to sites that
> had ISO images?

If my bandwidth was limited, perhaps. I would probably investigate my
options at that time.

>         I'm going a little overboard (but not much) to try to make you
> think, and to prove a point.

Don't make me think, that hurts! ;-)

>         The comments about downloading 200Ms of Linux being somehow more
> valid and deserving of bandwidth than downloading 200Ms of songs
> requires sysadmins to make a value judgement about the traffic.  Of
> course a sysadmin type is going to place a higher value on downloading
> Linux because they understand why it's useful.

If your available bandwidth is fine, you wouldn't care, but I take it
that isn't the case here.

>         Perhaps a budding musician is downloading the collected works of
> Jim Morrison for study.  *shrug* Making blanket value judgements is
> dangerous and wrong.

If he was hogging _my_ pipe, I _would_ have a blanket judment for the
budding musician. An institution should be more careful in it's decision
making process, and I hope they do consider carefully what they do, but
we do live in a world of scarce resources. And sometimes not making a
blanket value judgement _is_ making a blanket value judgement.

>         I don't know.  You are sometimes forced into that position.
> Value judgements are hard, and shouldn't be treated lightly.  Blocking
> all Napster traffic is making a blanket value judgement that most likely
> isn't correct.

I think that because traffic shaping is so cool and popular, it will
become an easier thing to accomplish over time (more people want it ->
more people work on it). When we can say "Hey Tim, just throttle the
Napster traffic like this: ....", I won't think blocking all Napster
traffic is the thing to do. As it is now, I think it would be nice if
this "potential" problem didn't get out of control, and it would also be
nice if Tim spent some time with his kid.

> It's a difficult problem,

Agreed and indeed!