On 12/3/05, Brian Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Isn't it now once a day?  That's what I thought.  "You will be required to
> authenticate daily." is what I think it reads.

My last year in on-campus housing, it was a couple times a week
(5:45am, 6:05am, 6:15am, and 6;20 am on mondays was pretty normal)...
However, the entire time, the authentication page specifically said
that the weekly authentication would only be at the beginning of fall
semester.  The authentication would've irked me a lot less if that
notice had been honest.  I was very frustrated that the note said it
would only be for the beginning of fall, and it was the entire year.

> And apparently you have never been in on-campus housing where someone with a
> virus can take down the connection to an entire building.

Yup... Was there.  Also saw how difficult it was to convince OIT that
there was something wrong with the network.  If every single computer
on the floor cannot connect, I assure you that A) it's not related to
the fact that my particular computer is running Linux, and B) it's not
a problem with everybody's ethernet cord being disconnected...  That
was difficult for some of the people on the phones to understand...

> Or maybe you
> weren't on campus for the time a CSR got rooted and flooded the entire
> network.  It takes a lot for a switched network to go down, but he was able
> to do it.

I was there when a virus was being sent (repeatedly) to the entire
student body, and I had to pull it off of most of the machines on my
floor.  I didn't see the authentication helping there...   The
machines in question were authenticated, and I was able to go on the
network to download the virus removal utilities (and install virus
scanners which the people in question would turn off because it
wouldn't let them download and open a zip file in an email from
someone they didn't know)

> I have been in the hot seat when trying to track down these worms and
> miscellaneous spyware.  Trust me, if authenticating causes you an
> inconvenience, it is nowhere near the inconvenience you would feel if it
> wasn't there.  People get pretty furious when we haven't found the
> worm-infected computer in less than 30 seconds...

I agree that spyware and worms are troublesome, but I haven't seen how
the authentication system solved it.  I've seen many machines in
on-campus housing that had tons of spyware/adware installed, multiple
viruses, and had no trouble authenticating to the network.   Perhaps
the little comment at the bottom of the authentication page has
changed, but when I was there, it wasn't being very honest, and that
frustrated me (even though my machines were both authenticating
automatically at that point).

Anyway... That's just what I noticed.  I lived on campus both before
and after the authentication system was in place, and I noticed no
difference in network uptime, viruses, spyware, etc...

~Erin

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