You are right, David.  In a perfect world, students would have the tools to
choose whether to be discourteous or not. But, alas, we don't have the means
to give our students an applet to run.  I'm not sure how we would distribute
that.  We don't have an install CD of any sort.  Did I mention the fact that
I'm not the network admin? I'm the manager of the program.  I sort of depend
on those techie types to tell me that this stuff can be done.  So I plead
ignorance on this count (no snide remarks, please  ;-) ).

It would be an interesting experiment at the very least.  I certainly can't
argue that the students would choose to be bandwidth pigs regardless of what
means we give them to measure usage. We do have an easily accessible website
that provides usage stats but whether the students choose to know about it
is another question.  We are public with our policy and the information to
get the usage stats.

And since I lack a measurement tool for individual users, I'm not able to
enforce the policy anyway.  The only thing we can do is watch the traffic
and make decisions about what is a fair use and what is not, and then take
steps to block what is not.  It's definitely not a perfect world.

Sheila
Way out west...

-----Original Message-----
From: David Wiley [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 2:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [P2P] How much bandwidth is reasonable?


"Smith, Sheila" wrote:
>
> Amen, Shelley! What a novel idea. Actually teaching folks about sharing
> resources and being considerate of others' needs.  I know, I know. It
should
> be taught at home...I'm sure that bridge has already been crossed.

Is there a way for users of your networks to monitor current bandwidth
utilization on your campus network? I agree that people should be
considerate of others needs. But to say to them "turn it off and never
run it because it might be a problem" is not asking them to be
considerate. That's called compulsion. It's like saying "never eat any
ice cream, because yours might be the last bite!" If I can see into the
bucket I can determine for myself whether or not its a good idea to have
another bite. Then I can be considerate.

If the students had access to the information they needed to decide what
the most considerate course of action was, then it would be a matter of
their choosing to be considerate. Without that type of
decision-supporting data, all they get is the sysadmin saying "take my
word for it and do what I say." If you expect them to behave
responsibly, first give them the tools they need to be able to do so. A
tiny WinXX taskbar applet that went "ding" and started flashing when
campus bandwidth usage passed an arbitrary percentage (like 80%) could
signal these users to behave responsibly by shutting down Napster for a
while. With a little more work, the student could choose (notice the
care to preserve their choice to do the right thing, not coerce them to)
to let the app close down Napster for them while they're away.

> And before anyone protests about not saying how much is too much, we feel

I don't want to protest your choice of how much is too much, I just want
to know if you are public about your policy and if your students have
access to any information that would let them comply in a more
sophisticated way than just "shutting down."

> place on the firewall, then that constitutes "excessive bandwidth."  And
> let's not even get into the argument of whether Napster et al., are an
> appropriate application to be monopolizing the available bandwidth.
Perhaps

We can skip that arg for now, but it is only a matter of months before
those of us working on legitimate educational p2p applications obviate
this line of argument. =)

Boy I love a good, spirited, good-spirited discussion!

David

--
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$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c
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