Internet in Halls (Hornet)

Thanks for getting in touch. Peer to peer technology has always been
popular. The changes that have been observed are related to the trends in
use. These differ over time and are directly related to various
technological advances that have made it increasingly easier for people to
share photos, music and now video over the Internet. There are plenty of
traditional ways of doing this that have great results and don't get people
into trouble, like Flickr for sharing photographs.

The downside of P2P has always been that many people, often those
unaccustomed to western culture, have a lax attitude to copyright law. This
has led to many P2P technologies being used to disseminate material
illegally, which is a shame because in theory it has some very good uses.
Due to this British Academic Institutions have always worked closely with
UKERNA (the people who provide the Universities connection to the Internet)
to make sure that acceptable usage is maintained. At Manchester, Hornet is
the customer facing side of this.

Please let me clarify a few things for you. In regards to Skype, UKERNA have
worked very closely with US Universities to manage how Skype networks
function. As a result Skype supernodes are banned on campus, which means
that we can still allow Skype to be used for phone calls despite that fact
it runs on a peer to peer framework. This does make its use significantly
different to peer to peer filesharing in terms of the content being
transmitted and how it is regulated. There are no plans to block Skype at
present.

The 4oD, Sky by Broadband and soon to arrive BBC on Demand services as you
point out, use Kontiki. Some Universities have already banned this. We are
monitoring the current levels of network use being generated by this and are
discussing what the future of the currently open policy will be for Hornet
2008 (i.e. September onwards).

At present a small number of users (<1%) are causing disruption on the
network through the use (and attempted use) of P2P systems. Many Hornet
users have complained that this has made the network extremely slow. This is
preventing the majority of users from using the system for legitimate
purposes and this is unacceptable.

Lol Ana. People were getting hundreds of that same email whilst others didn't even get it once! It was in fact a glitch though as the email was sent using an old system causing nothing but grief!

Yeah I got that letter too. You get about 10-20 channels free I think.

Ports can be easily changed or manipulated. Most Unis block ports resulting in not only P2P being blocked, but other things like games which don't need to be. HoRNet (UoM ISP) however don't port block, but instead use a little more advanced piece of technology to restrict P2P and certain other activities without restricting other things in the process.