The Bowdoin Orient

March 2, 2001
Volume CXXXII, Number 18

CIS says Napster slows gateway to Internet

by JAMES FISHER, SENIOR COPY EDITOR

   On the morning of Monday, February 19, Bowdoin's gateway to the Internet was once again filling to the brim with traffic.
   When students arrived on campus in late January for the beginning of the term, Internet access had intensified as hundreds of web browsers, e-mail applications, and Napster clients on campus were restarted.
   By Valentine's Day, however, the pattern of use had shifted; outgoing Internet activity-computers around the world requesting web pages, e-mails, and mp3s from Bowdoin's network-was roaring, while data coming into Bowdoin from the Internet were slowing down.
   This was bad news for campus computer users. As the Student Computing Committee (SCC) put it in an all-students e-mail later that day, "Our bandwidth has evaporated because people are downloading music FROM our computers, and the only thing we get in return for this is a very slow Internet connection."
   The SCC recommended that Bowdoin's Napster users alter their settings to make their personal collections of music files unavailable to the rest of the world, essentially raising a one-way electronic drawbridge. The ability to receive files from off-campus computers would not be affected.
   At the same time, the SCC advised Computing and Information Services (CIS) to test technical solutions to the problem, including deliberately limiting the size of the "pipe" feeding Napster-specific data from Bowdoin to other computers.
   The efforts seem to have been successful. Public statistics on Bowdoin's Internet use at http://noc.bowdoin.edu/stats/wans_idx.html showed that the next day witnessed a sharp drop in external Internet access to Bowdoin's servers.
   But on Tuesday February 27, while testing solutions, CIS turned off the rate-limiting measures to gauge the staying power of Bowdoin's treatment for Napster addiction. By 2:00 p.m., the outgoing Internet traffic peaked; it did not decline until after midnight, and peaked again 14 hours later, at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
   What happened this month, when access to Bowdoin's information networks became so tempting to computer users around the world, was an unusually clear example of an issue that has befuddled educational institutions around the country.
   Both large universities and small colleges that make it a point to provide universal high-speed Internet access to their students are frustrated by the way their bandwidth evaporates' into music- and video-swapping technologies.
   John Meyers '02, chair of the Student Computing Committee, pointed out that "we have a very fast Internet connection... Bowdoin is rated in the top ten schools in the US in terms of bandwidth per student." But one or two computers transferring large files quickly-which technologies like Napster facilitate-is still enough to bring Internet connections like Bowdoin's to a standstill, and the result is frustratingly sluggish access.
   If schools try to solve the problem by expanding the pipe and paying handsomely for faster Internet connections, as Bowdoin has done, they find that the demand for bandwidth will often rise just as fast as the supply. At Bowdoin, "the first-year dorms tend to be the largest users of bandwidth," Meyers said.
   The College is now exploring other ways to stem departing Napster traffic, which, if successful, will make Internet access on campus faster-including speedier Napster downloads to students' computers.
   The SCC's current concern has nothing to do with Napster's recent legal troubles, although the company is losing a suit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America.
   "Bowdoin has been very generous with Napster," Meyers noted. "Whether you believe Napster violates copyright or not, there's a technical problem to deal with."
   Permanent solutions will be discussed at the next Information Technology Committee meeting in March.
   Meyers said that a comprehensive bandwidth policy, detailing the amount of control Bowdoin will exercise over its Internet link, is not far off.
   "E-mail response [to the SCC e-mail] was wonderful," Meyers said, but "the actual technical response"-how many Napster users actually made their files inaccessible to others-"is hard to judge."