Worrying a little about next year

JebJoya · Post by **JebJoya** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 9:19 pm

Okay, I'm a 3rd year on a 4 year course, and was a pretty big sharer on twofo in my first year. I was browsing around and stumbled across the twofo website then here, and noticed all the rather scary ITS restrictions that are being talked about.

Now, I realise that P2P etc will all be stripped down, as (I suppose) it should be. However, the talk of this 5Gb limit (however 'soft' it is) and fining is worrying me a little. I'm back on campus next year, in Tocil apparently (yay for a 2 minute walk to the Maths Dept!), but I fear I may have issues with my youtube/dailymotion/online music collaboration (i.e. making music and transferring lossless files over the internet to glue bits on).

Am I going to have an issue with this (don't worry, I am tech savvy, but I've had enough of Tiscali this year so any limit is scaring the shit out of me)? Should I think twice before signing my contract? Should I get a lawyer to look over it? Am I just worrying over nothing and everything will be fine (barring the lack of Lost/Scrubs/Grey's Anatomy/House/Simpsons/Family Guy/Futurama/Heroes... Damnit)?

Jamie
http://mathmo.blogspot.com

Post by **astropoint** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 9:08 am

From what we can see (which granted is a fairly limited cross section of people on campus) ITS haven't done anything about the 5GB a week download limit. Those that have been cut off appear to have been for using p2p programs of one form of another

JebJoya · Post by **JebJoya** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:09 pm

That's a bit of a relief! To be honest, I expected as much from various forum threads here, but not much had been written of late so I was really just wanting an update.

Also, the talk of the spyware from the Uni kinda boiled down to nothing - I presume that was just an out-of-control rumour that has since been shown to not be true?

Finally, on a totally separate point, I'm trying to log in to twofo from off campus to talk live (rather than quiet forums, which just irritate me generally) and I'm getting that "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it." - I've signed up on the website to register my nick, so I guess I've got to wait for that to go through? Or have I got an issue with my settings?

Jamie
http://mathmo.blogspot.com/

Post by **astropoint** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:13 pm

The Uni 'Campus Manager' or whatever it was called did seem to vanish to god only knows where. Not heard anything more about it myself so can;t really help. They may just have delayed it due to incompetence on their part in setting it up

As for connecting to twofo from Off Campus, it does all work. From what you said, it sounds like you are either connecting to the old address, or that you aren't using the correct port number.
The correct address is hub.twofo.co.uk:4144
Simply connecting to hub.twofo.co.uk will not work

JebJoya · Post by **JebJoya** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:28 pm

Hmm, that's odd, when I connect to 4144 I just get a connected message and a blank screen... Got my WAN IP right, got ports open on TCP and UDP protocols and linked in the settings page, got it set to "Direct Connection" - I wonder what's going wrong...

Jamie

Post by **astropoint** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:31 pm

Alot of people seem to be having similar problems these days. Can you connect to any random public hubs, or do you just get the same problem. If you are getting the same problem there then it's looking like your ISP may be shaping your connecting during peak times.
There are some people on the hub (not very many as it's the middle of the holidays) from off campus who are using that address to connect fine

JebJoya · Post by **JebJoya** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:52 pm

Bastard Tiscali, shoulda guessed! I can't download the public hubs list even at the moment, I'll check it out next week when I get back to Leamington

Post by **astropoint** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:53 pm

The public hub list that comes with DC has been dead for ages now. try this one instead:
http://www.awenet.info/hublist/PublicHubList.xml.bz2

Zed0 · Post by **Zed0** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:40 am

On the 5GB/month limit front, I have a friend who does call outs for ITS (student computing officer or whatever its called) and apparently ITS realised that that limit was just stupid (even for them) and removed it.

Post by **astropoint** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:43 am

Aha, some form of intelligence from ITS

Makes sense they would remove that to be honest as a large percentage of campus would have been going over that in a month. As long as you don't go completely insane with your connection I can't see them noticing you for non p2p traffic

echelon · Post by **echelon** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:25 am

Yeah I agree you should be fine if u don't go over crazy.. Another annoyance of course is their restriction on "server applications", but it depends what kind of computer user you are. Myself I would not be able to survive without "server applications", especially ssh access :S

Also I've got Tiscali running on my term address and I connect to Twofo fine, though I have been noticing my torrents having a bit of trouble.. Damn them they were also suppose to call me about updating the status of my account. I swear they're avoiding me.. I think I may soon have my lawyer send them a friendly letter, since that might get them to respond

JebJoya · Post by **JebJoya** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 5:14 pm

Sorry for dragging up an old post again, but I've just been getting through all my on-campus accommodation details, including the ITS links, and in the Service Description, guess what I find back?

4. A maximum weekly download limit of 1.3 GB, approximately 5 GB per month. This is imposed in order to facilitate fair & equal access for all ResNet Service users; & prevent a small number of users from utilising the majority of the bandwidth available to the ResNet Service.

Why do they do this to us? Why? 5Gb/mo would get eaten by just youtube and stuff!

AGH

Jeb

Post by **astropoint** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 5:17 pm

That was never enforced....literally never. heard from a fairly reliable source that they realised it was silly and didn't bother.
If it is still in place I would consider it a guideline rather than an actual limit. Just don't go insane with bandwidth and you will probably be fine