Gnutella may make a quantum change/paradigm shift in our system
administration environments. We have been operating a show wherein our
servers mediate/coordinate/base information interchange (mail, ftp, web
service), but Gnutella appears to provide an uncontrolled any to any model of
data interchange. No servers and no servier-based control/mediation. Lots of
hairy issues raise their head.
= Metallica could sue MP3 and did....along with educational institutions, in
their role as information conduits for anarchic college students. Gnutella is
open-source freeware....thus there's nobody left to sue except the conduits (us).
= Supposedly, Gnutella traffic has no particular definitive signature nor port
assignments. Is this true?
= Obviously, Gnutella is a 'all-power-to-the-people' wonder: free and
independent data transfer, democracy comes to the bitstream. Yes....how do
we provide even the most rudimentary QoS when the system bogs? At the
college I sysadmin for we are considering giving the students their own
dedicated T that they can abuse as they wish. Personally, a part of mine yearns
to see the MP3 bandwidth-abusers strung up by fellow students wishing sub-
minute webpage loading....what a pipedream, students enforcing responsible,
reasonable use of resource!
An ounce of strategy is worth many pounds of tactics. I like to foment a wide-
ranging discussion here about what the wider ramifications are, how we all see
Gnutella's opportunities and hazards and how we are going to live with it.
How do we even monitor it, much less throttle it?
I don my Nomex and await your response.
// Stewart Dean - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
//
// Machiavelli said (in essence):
// Bad mercenaries will lose your country for you,
// "good" ones will take it away from you....
// Don't use mercenaries
// Dean's corollary:
// Hiring temps or vendor employees may be all the rage...
// but they're the same as mercenaries:
// You give neither loyalty nor committment;
// the favor, if returned, should come as no surprise
// Look to your own honor if you expect any from them.
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