On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 17:51 -0700, Jacob Albretsen wrote: > When it comes to campus-housing and the blocking of ports (not jacks), I've > found that OIT likes to change their minds when it comes to if campus-housing > is a part of the "BYU Network" or not when they justify their actions. For > example, online games. OIT uses the excuse that they block those ports > because the network is designed to be used for "academic purposes" and ignore > the fact these are computers in a home and not a campus lab computer. So in > this case, it is part of the BYU network. But, since it's part of the > network, then shouldn't I be able to map the network drive in my department > for my research group? No no no! The campus network and housing network are > "separate" in that case! And the list goes on.....
With the residential nets, OIT has really maneuvered themselves into somewhat of a legal pickle. OIT is certainly within its rights to say that the network is an academic network in labs and classrooms on campus and certainly can legislate what can and can't be accessed and what ports can and can't be used, and even dictate what applications and operation systems can be allowed on the network. But in the resnets it is another story. It comes down to the question, is OIT an ISP? OIT says they are not (hence the blocking of ports, banning open wireless, etc). However if they are not, can you go out and get a real ISP? Nope. So OIT *is* the ISP, the common carrier, but they don't want to admit that. Even worse, they are charging for the services as if they were an ISP. Customers don't even have a choice. The fact that BYU owns the residential housing units notwithstanding, I think that on- campus residents would have some legal clout to tell OIT either stop blocking ports (peer-to-peer, games, etc) or grant access to residential units to competition from iProvo, Comcast, or whatever. In fact I'm surprised a challenge hasn't yet happened. If I was the university, knowing that this position was legally questionable, I would just outsource the entire resnet network to some 3rd party. That way bandwidth and virus issues wouldn't be my problem; the campus network would continue on it's merry way. The networks in the residential areas absolutely don't have anything to do with academics. They are first and foremost a purchased service just like phones or cable television. Imagine if OIT (who also provides phone service) said that these phones are only for the support of academic purposes, so the fact that our phone system won't let you call your mother isn't our problem. Brian, if you can find out who was the bright person that came up with the idea that 3 simultaneous ssh connections to or from the same ip address is a block-able (naughty) offense, please let us know so we can string him up by some cat-5 cable. Funny story about OIT. One of the ops people called my office (I'm the CSR in Chemistry) and said that one of my computers was sending out bad traffic of some kind (maybe a compromised host or a virus) and wanted me to track it down. I asked him for more information and he told me the ip address which wasn't in our netblock at all. I did a quick reverse lookup and it comes back as somehost.et.byu.edu. Apparently he had neither thought to do a reverse lookup or check their database of assigned ip addresses. Needless to say he was a might bit embarrassed, but unfortunately this type of thing happens fairly frequently. Even more funny (actually worrisome), when we were talking to OIT about our IP address rollover, the person in charge of the rollover (ie the head manager) had no clue what a netblock or netmask was. We needed 17 ip addresses, but of course the smallest allowable netblock is 32 ip addresses. He wondered why he couldn't just assign us 17 random ip addresses. We kindly explained to him that our firewall has to route traffic according to subnets and netmasks. Anyway, all is well that ends I guess. Michael > > > -------------------- > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > > The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their > author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list -- Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
