Re: [MAGNet] effect of music sharing on shared 10Mb network

On Feb 24 at 10:08, "gleno" wrote:

> What is the performance impact on a shared 10 Mbit network of people
> sharing their itunes music libraries? Are there policy issues?

I work for CNS as the "network metrician," and I often am asked to try to
figure out why a given network is experiencing slowness. After I restrain
myself from saying "of course everything stinks, you're on a decrepit
shared-media 10Mbps network!" I will look at traffic stats to see if
there's any one IP or protocol that's standing out.

There's no CNS policy against music on the network (although there are
branches of UCB that do deal with any copyright issues that could arise);
but whether it's high-res pictures of Llamas or iTunes music, anything
that's causing an operational problem is subject to...corrective action.

As somebody pointed out, songs are often encoded 128Kbps, and you have a
theoretical maximum of 10000Kbps (10Mbps) of traffic on the shared media
(with a practical maximum of less than that), so (depending on the usage
pattern) it would be a major problem.

IMO the use streaming media on shared-10 networks is generally a Bad Idea.
Is it *policy* that users not do it? I haven't heard it put in quite
those terms...it's kind of like asking whether it's policy to not smash
your head as hard as you can against your monitor: When you do it, it
causes major headaches and somebody has to come by and fix things up and
tell you "don't do this anymore"...but it's probably not written up in a
document anywhere under "Prohibitions of the monitor and head." Once it's
an operational problem known to CNS, it's our job to fix it.

Mike

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Received on Fri Feb 24 11:45:48 2006