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  • Question about bandwidth monitoring

    My school has decided to monitor bandwidth for potential copyright infringements. According to the school they get a list of highest bandwidth users and then take a look at what they are downloading. If it is violating copyright laws than they shut down that user's ports. I'm thinking that the only way they can tell between if someone is downloading a 500 meg movie or Linux is by monitoring certain ports only (those used by file sharing programs). Is this a correct assumption? I'd ask the network admins directly, but I'd doubt they would go into details of what they are doing.

    Thanks
    Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
    Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

    "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

  • #2
    I doubt it. I think they'll just monitor everything people dl and then make a list of the biggest bandwidth hogs and check their computers.
    Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.

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    • #3
      If they have a bandwidth monitoring setup that allows them to see what individual users/PCs are using the internet, then that implies they have some sort of proxy server.
      In which case, the proxy server will be able to tell them what website you were going to and what files were accessed.
      I'm not quite so sure about non-HTTP / FTP programs such as Morpheus or Napster-a-likes, but I'd imagine they'd either block the relavent ports or do as Impact says.
      Athlon XP-64/3200, 1gb PC3200, 512mb Radeon X1950Pro AGP, Dell 2005fwp, Logitech G5, IBM model M.

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      • #4
        sometimes it is just a case of "we wanna nail you" and so we are gonna make it sound official. If you are downloading alot of large files, you must be a hacker. Especially if you are asking to use one of those 3rd world AMD chips LOL

        I hope you have a good home connection, as it looks like your school one is gonna be one big BIG BROTHER.

        best of luck
        AMD XP2100+, 512megs DDR333, ATI Radeon 8500, some other stuff.

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        • #5
          Yeah I know for sure they just shut down ports of violators. Just wasn't sure if they only monitor those ports or all of them. If the school does use a proxy server wouldn't that mean I had to set my computer to connect through it? I'm not set to use any proxy manual or automatic settings.

          As for the big brother thing - most schools have privacy rights where they can only look at the data if there is strong suspicion or hazard for another involved. UO has no such clause so they can monitor anything on their hardware.
          Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
          Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

          "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

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          • #6
            TnT,
            How is your networking set up? If it's DHCP, you could be thrown through a proxy and not know it. Also, some routers are getting very smart these days, and at least do some kind of logging.
            Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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            • #7
              They are probably doing it through DHCP then.
              Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
              Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

              "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

              Comment

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