Terwijl Napster, Metallica, Madonna, meneer Dre en de rest van Amerikaanse muziekindustrie ineen hevige deathmatch zijn verwikkeld, werken security bedrijven in stilte aan maatregelen tegen file-swapping tools zoals Gnutella en het immer geroemde Napster. Vooral universiteiten zien de snelheid van hun internet uplinks als pudding in mekaar vallen door het fanatieke geleech op de campus.
Twee mogelijke oplossingen zijn PacketShaper van Packeteer en PacketHound van Palisade Systems. Beide zijn een hardware/software oplossing die de netwerk traffic analyseren op verdachte partronen. Het gebruik van proggies zoals Napster wordt er niet door onmogelijk gemaakt, maar de bandbreedte wordt wel dusdandig toebedeeld dat er voorrang wordt gegeven aan de eigenlijke toepassingen waarvoor het netwerk is bedoelt:
Hap Wheeler of Plattsburgh State University in New York, and John Muggli of College of St. Benedict and St. John's University of Minnesota, are among a growing number of network administrators looking for solutions to the congestion.With PacketShaper, Wheeler, who ensures network capability for 2,600 students, was able to set policies which allowed students to still access Napster, but keep it from diverting bandwidth away from university-sponsored applications.
"Beginning last November, our T-1 was useless -- incoming and outgoing," Wheeler said. "It was just flooded and a search kept pointing the way to Napster."
But Wheeler and Muggli also had to contend with students claiming their right to "free speech" was being tread upon. Because PacketShaper doesn't kill content, students could not direct anger toward their network managers. It wasn't that Wheeler and Muggli were pulling the plug on their students Internet access; rather they made them wait a little bit for PacketShaper to distribute bandwidth appropriately.
[...] Another solution is PacketHound, developed by Palisade Systems Inc.. It's a software and hardware solution that allows administrators to block a number of bandwidth-eating applications, including Gnutella, RealAudio and RealVideo and Napster. The product resides passively on networks, making it invisible to hackers. By utilizing Intel-based PCs, the product is often less expensive and easier to administer than ordinary firewalls.
Check Security Focus voor het volledige artikel.
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