[UCLA-LUG] static IP's in dorms

[Byron Ellis]

On Wed, 15 Sep 1999 witten@torsion.org wrote:

> Oh? Allow me to quote a UCLA CS professor, in regard to the STC's policy on
> network services: "This could very well interfere with educational
> classwork.  Yes.  This policy, if enforced, would have made it impossible for
> students to do this quarter's Project 2 in Computer Science 131 using their
> dorm room's computer.  Project 2 required them to write and test a Java
> servlet using a Web server operating on a `nonstandard'' test port (one of
> ports 9000 through 9080)."
> 
> UCLA damn well better be in the "business" of providing things to make
> students doing their homework happy. Or else, guess what.. students will
> take their "business" elsewhere.

So remind me again why placing a test server on a specific PORT requires a
static IP?  Additionally, if you'd read the second part of the message you
would have noticed that there is a means to temporarily get a static IP
for classes that might actually have a reason for requiring a static IP
(though unless its for profs/TAs to check servers. I don't really see much
justification for that but *shrug*) so obviously they realize that
students might want to conduct the "business" of their homework-- they
just don't want students conducting the business of, say, a major FTP
site. (They probably haven't installed load levelling, bandwidth
throttling and the other goodies that let real ISPs support high-traffic
sites)

> With the magic of dynamic DNS services, www.linuxvalue.com can point quite
> nicely to a dynamically-allocated IP in the dorms. So there goes their
> alleged "reasoning" for disallowing static IP addresses. But this is to be
> expected, as the STC has never been a real big fan of reasoning.

*sigh* The point of the STC policy (that you've obviously missed) is not
that it is ultimately useless in the face of someone who REALLY wants to
run a server-- they're covering their ass for when RIAA decides to sue
UCLA 'cause some idiot was running a public MP3 server, infringing
copyrights left and right and managed to piss of BMI (like that poor kid a
couple of days ago). Since UCLA owns the networks they are (to some
extent) liable for what people do with that network.



> -- 
> Dan Helfman
> UCLA Linux Users Group: http://www.linux.ucla.edu
> My GnuPG public key: http://torsion.org/witten/
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> http://linux.ucla.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux
> 

---
"There is an ineffable quality to some technology, described
by its creators as cocinnitous, or technically sweet, or a 
nice hack-- signs that it was made with great care by one who
was not merely motivated but inspired. It is the difference
between an engineer and a hacker"
	- Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

 byron@mbi.ucla.edu * Byron Ellis * Chris Lee Lab * x44026