Napster at MSU?

[Jeremy Bowers]

I was going straight to Doug Nelson about this issue, but perhaps it would
be better to run it past a technically competent group first, also hopefully
more friendly then the msu.misc crowd would be.

I would like you to look at this page:

http://mrtg.cl.msu.edu/mrtg/cc2-gw.2.html

It's a traffic analysis for a router.  This router happens to be a special
router on campus, as I understand it, this is our Merit link.  In other
words, all outgoing and incoming traffic goes through this router.

(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I want you to read the page _backwards_.  Look at the year graph first. The
graph is almost flat... an odd spike in June I can't explain, but overall,
the router averages ~1/4 maximum capacity with a roughly equal amount of
data incoming and outgoing.

A small spike on the incoming data in Aug/Sept when the students return to
campus... then all hell breaks loose in the third week of October.  I cannot
confirm that Napster was released around that time.

I _can_ confirm that the most recent Napster beta was released on January
20th... give it a bit of time for word to travel on campus, and we're just
in time for the Febuary spike that has not ended since.  Since that spike
has occurred, network connectivity has been shot to _hell_ around here.  The
MSU web page doesn't even _load_ sometimes, images can be dropped, and other
such wonderful things, and thats _internal_.  External connectivity is even
worse; my personal non-MSU sites will sometimes just cease to exist for a
period of a minute or two, and that's happenning multiple times per hour.  I
had a telnet session to pilot _die_ about 3 hours ago; not just hang forever
waiting for input, which sometimes happens when pilot goes on the fritz, the
connection _died_.  2 minutes later, it was fine.  I couldn't connect before
then, though.

I experience this in McDonel, I experience this in the Nisbet building, and
I experience this in the engineering building.  Am I the only one who thinks
the network's shot around here during the day?

Now, back to the graphs. If you look at the weekly graph, there's a strong
negative blip over the past three or four days I can't explain, but I don't
care about; the net still didn't work.  Then traffic skyrockets again.  Keep
in mind that while it may not look like we're saturating the link on the
weekly graph, if you look at today's graph you can see it hit the maximum
data rate, and presumably exceeds it.

Now, some points (again, correct me where I go wrong):

- If the recent network problems were solely due to routing issues with
Merit, then we should expect to see network graphs looking like last
Saturdays... low, flat, non-activity as nobody can get in or out.  Instead,
we see traffic skyrocketting nearly all of last month.  I am concluding that
we have a traffic issue.

- I can't _prove_ it is Napster, all I'm saying is that based on the
experiences of other Universities, it is a likely explanation.  If it ISN'T
Napster, I _still_ want to know what it is.

- If... if if if it is Napster, then I want it banned or throttled
immediately. Let the students whine about censorship; let them first look up
the definition of censorship before they do so, because banning Napster
ain't censorship by any stretch of the imagination.  I've got projects that
are suffering because the network is being toasted.

Now, I'd like to ask Doug about these things directly, and ask if he's maybe
afraid of student backlash or something.  Me, I just want the damned network
to function like it's supposed to.

Are there any obvious flaws, other then the fact that I don't have the tools
to prove or disprove that it is Napster's fault?