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ZaZu
11-17-2003, 07:48 PM
Kansas State U software identifies and then kills p2p apps

Kansas State U's Josh Ballard, a computer science senior, is a happy guy.

When students went back to this fall, they discovered they could no longer use their p2p apps. And that's because a kill-em app created by Ballard now blocks exchanges.

"Ballard, a Computing and Network Services employee, created a network-filtering software system that dramatically reduced the amount of Internet bandwidth used by K-State, which in turn reduced K-State's costs significantly," says the February 18 online Kansas State Collegian, going on:

The Creative MuVo is available in 64MB and 128MB versions on Amazon.

"Ballard said the peer-to-peer file-sharing applications were creating stress on the system, which was limiting people's abilities to do research and academic work."

The story quotes Ballard as saying his software can identify p2p apps as well as 'malicious content' traveling through the network.

"When the software identifies these types of packets, it either drops them or returns them to the sender, saying the connection is no longer valid," says the report.

"Besides relieving stress on the system, Ballard's system also saves K-State more than $100,000 a year on extra Internet service, Harvard Townsend, director of CNS, said.

Townsend went on that early in fall 2002, the residence hall networks were completely saturated, which caused slow performance. Because of this, students had trouble accessing anything on the Internet both off and on campus, said the Collegiate item.

"The problem was entirely due to students in the residence halls using peer-to-peer file sharing applications like KaZaA, Morpheus and Gnutella to exchange copyrighted and licensed music, movies and software," he said. "Once Josh's system was put in place to block those exchanges, the network performance improved dramatically for both on-and off-campus access. The network once again became usable."

Townsend also apparently said the system helps to reduce the number of legal complaints K-State receives for violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

"Groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America contact CNS when they find violators of the act at K-State."

"One major U.S. public university said recently they deal with an average of 200 such legal complaints a month," Townsend said. "K-State only deals with about one per month because of Josh's system."

Ballard is quoted as saying of his system, "I'm not going to say it's all original, because it's not. I built on some others' ideas and threw in some original stuff, and that's kinda where it came from."

mp3newswire

(FROM THE ORIGINAL POST [not me] --ZaZu-- )

An opinion:
I'm a student at K-State. In fact, I went high school with this guy... My jaw dropped when I saw the original article about him in the Collegian, and my jaw dropped again when I saw this on Zeropaid.. Nobody liked him in high school, and a lot less people like him now...HUGE tool. The ol' social skills passed him by.

Zeropaid News


Source (http://www.fasttrackhelp.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3134)

Gre1
11-17-2003, 10:10 PM
Well, those college kids won't be getting anymore files, Psych they will be able to get away with that. Take BT for example.

Benno
11-17-2003, 10:19 PM
Somehow I understand that, if the whole network performance at a university suffers its not really that good ;)

Arm
11-17-2003, 10:45 PM
Originally posted by ZaZu@17 November 2003 - 19:48
An opinion:
I'm a student at K-State. In fact, I went high school with this guy... My jaw dropped when I saw the original article about him in the Collegian, and my jaw dropped again when I saw this on Zeropaid.. Nobody liked him in high school, and a lot less people like him now...HUGE tool. The ol' social skills passed him by.
:angry: Well I hope he was bullied constantly and had other many bad things happen to him. B)

Hmm of college students are smart enough they should be able to find a way around the blocks.

Switeck
11-18-2003, 12:57 AM
Originally posted by Arm@17 November 2003 - 17:45
college students are smart enough they should be able to find a way around the blocks.
They should start doing college-only file trading and use outside connections (like private dial-up/ISDN/cable/etc lines) to get more material to share.

If he's blocking internal p2p file-sharing, then use new programs (even make their own) -- that'll help spark innovation in the p2p world. :D

If this blocker is blocking by 'behavior', then 10+ player realtime online games would probably qualify too -- or at least running a server for them would!

The more anal this blocker is/gets, the more it will HURT the very people it's made to protect. If college staff can't send each other 1+ MB files because it trips this thing's detectors and blockers, then I'm sure it won't be just the students that'll have a bone to pick with this guy soon...

Gre1
11-18-2003, 02:26 AM
I think that guy will become apart of the RIAA or sell that app to them or something, see that's what happens when u don't have friends.

Supernatural
11-18-2003, 12:37 PM
I see it already... Kansas State U enrollment drops by 90% in the coming years. :lol:

I know I wouldn't go to some lame ass school where I can't use P2P.

Gre1
11-18-2003, 01:41 PM
I bet if he got beat up then I know he will get his ass tore apart now. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

james_bond_rulez
11-18-2003, 02:43 PM
Originally posted by Arm+17 November 2003 - 22:45--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Arm @ 17 November 2003 - 22:45)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-ZaZu@17 November 2003 - 19:48
An opinion:
I&#39;m a student at K-State. In fact, I went high school with this guy... My jaw dropped when I saw the original article about him in the Collegian, and my jaw dropped again when I saw this on Zeropaid.. Nobody liked him in high school, and a lot less people like him now...HUGE tool. The ol&#39; social skills passed him by.
:angry: Well I hope he was bullied constantly and had other many bad things happen to him. B)

Hmm of college students are smart enough they should be able to find a way around the blocks. [/b][/quote]
I had sex with his girlfriend, REALLY&#33;&#33;&#33; :lol:

Jay
11-19-2003, 03:13 AM
bet there are other people on campus who r working to destroy this, sooner or later they will find a way around it

Illuminati
11-19-2003, 10:44 AM
Hope there&#39;s someone as smartarse as this guy was - They&#39;d be the ones to break through the system or find its vulnerabilities. After all, college students (when sober ;)) can be some of the most ingenious and morally volatile people in this age :D

If there isn&#39;t - Just beat the shit out of him or frame him for something to get kicked out. What&#39;s so hard about that :blink:

Supernatural
11-19-2003, 01:57 PM
Originally posted by james_bond_rulez@18 November 2003 - 09:43
I had sex with his girlfriend, REALLY&#33;&#33;&#33; :lol:
Yea... like he will ever have a girlfriend. It&#39;s porn and blow-up dolls for the rest of his life. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sparkle1984
11-19-2003, 04:23 PM
How exactly does his system distinguish between music/films and educational things that the university students may need to download? For example, I have downloaded several e-books which help with my studies. Does the filter system block those as well?
I think that would be really nasty if it did, as important things could get blocked.

4play
11-19-2003, 05:08 PM
i bet it works by ports used and packet headers. it will not look at content im guessing as this would be a real pain. what make you think the ebooks you downloaded were legal even if they did help your studies.

i like this idea in principle. these students are there to learn not to steal, if they wanna share music use the internal network, if it is designed properly then it should be more then capable of handling as much music swapping as the students can throw at it for no extra cost.

when many students are hosing the wan bandwidth of the uni then this will cost them in the long run. imagine &#036;100,000 worth of extra computer equipement in your university and all you have to do is cut back your p2p use.

Sparkle1984
11-19-2003, 08:17 PM
like this idea in principle. these students are there to learn not to steal

It seems strange for you to say this, considering you are a senior (5 star) member. :lol:

I think it could have a bad impact on freedom of information.

4play
11-19-2003, 08:26 PM
I think it could have a bad impact on freedom of information.

good point students should be allowed every oppurtunity to learn and freedom of information is a major part of this. but in truth how much public domain information is there on kazaa that cant be found with google. im guessing not alot.

I do partake in sharing at home not at university. even though that 3megs a second download is very tempting it would be stupid of me to steal bandwidth of my university in this way.

Sparkle1984
11-19-2003, 10:21 PM
Luckily I have never lived on campus anyway, so I&#39;ve always been free to do what I want at home&#33;&#33;