File Sharing and Network Usage
This page explains how to avoid overusing Brandeis's network capacity.
Overview
As UNet user, you may notice that there are times when your access to the Internet is slower than at others. This might manifest itself as delayed responses from web sites, longer download times or, in severe cases, timed out connections. While problems such as these can originate at the server or be traced to off-campus Internet congestion, quite often the cause is campus bandwidth being exhaused by the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs in the student residences.
All Brandeis users share two high-speed connections -- 45Mbps to Internet2 sites and 40Mbps general Internet -- via two different Internet Service Providers. The student residences are consistently the heaviest users of network bandwidth. Though this in itself is not necessarily a concern, on a shared network like ours, if some users generate a lot of network traffic, there is less room for other uses of the network.
It is quite typical for the top 50 users to consume 50 percent of the total network bandwidth through the use of P2P programs such as Morpheus, KaZaA, and AudioGalaxy -- more than all web browser, email, and instant messaging traffic for all other 4,500 campus users combined. Much of that traffic is outgoing (music files being sent from Brandeis to the Internet), so it does not benefit Brandeis users at all.
Your Bandwidth
You can find out exactly how much bandwidth you are using by going to Netmon.
If you find that you are consistently among the top users, please limit your use of high-bandwidth activities. There are a number of steps that you can take:
- If you use file sharing software, configure it to prevent your computer from being used as a server. Many users don't realize that most P2P software is configured by default to act as both a client and a server, so that any files you download are automatically shared with everyone else on the network. This can dramatically increase your bandwidth usage, especially if you are offering items that are large, rare, and popular (such as unauthorized copies of unreleased movies). Fortunately, it's easy to turn this feature off. The University of Chicago, Berkeley, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have well-written documentation on how to reclaim control of your computer.
- If you have large data transfers to do, try to limit them to off-peak times, between 2:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon.
- Configure your web browser to use our caching web proxy, which locally stores copies of popular web sites. If you surf to a cached web page, the response is much quicker since your browser doesn't have to go out over the Internet to retrieve the pages. The proxy server also filters out most banner ads. If you believe the proxy is causing any sort of problem with any sort of web site, please email the details to root@brandeis.edu. If it is important to you to remain anonymous, use the LTS Suggestion Box from a public computer. For Netscape, the configuration instructions are:
- Open Netscape.
- Under the Edit menu, select Preferences.
- In the left pane, double-click the Advanced menu.
- Under Advanced, select Proxies.
- Once there, click the radio button next to Automatic proxy configuration.
- For Configuration location (URL), enter: http://wpad.brandeis.edu/wpad.dat.
- Click OK to return to the browser.
- Close your browser and reopen it. Internet Explorer 5/6 should find and use the proxy server by default. To confirm this:
- Select Tools > Internet Options.
- Click the Connection tab. Select Advanced.
- Click the LAN Settings button.
- Make sure that the "Autodetect proxy settings" box is selected. Click OK.
- If Netmon no longer shows you in the top 50, thank you. We know that many of you have already taken some steps voluntarily. If you remain in the top 50 and you do not understand what your computer is doing that generates so much traffic, you can post (anonymously if you wish) to the discussion thread for help.
