  |
   |
|
|
Our users have probably experienced slow response in the HKU network. We had found that the HKU network was recently heavily loaded due to the following:
The most commonly used peer-to-peer file sharing software programs
are KaZaA, Morpheus, BearShare, LimeWire, Grokster, Blubster, WinMX,
BitTorrent, eDonkey, emule, etc.
They can talk to each other to share files automatically.
Such kind of file sharing will generate a lot of network traffic.
1) Usually, many peer-to-peer file sharing programs do not employ good security or access control. If users are not familiar with the programs or mis-configure the settings, it can be very easily set to enable the sharing of all the contents of the hard disk to other people. Other people or the peer-to-peer file sharing programs can then get and put files on your shared disk!
2) Your PC can easily contract computer viruses especially when the file downloaded is from an unknown source. Moreover, there are viruses and worms which affect only users who share files using these programs. For more information, please visit http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/vbs.gnutella.html
3) Large entertainment files (e.g. MP3 music files, VCD video files etc.) which mostly are infringing the copyright laws are often shared by these peer-to-peer programs. Users who share these copyrighted songs and movies knowingly or unknowingly are putting themselves in a legal liability.
4) If someone's PC is hosting a large amount of files for other people to download, the network traffic thus created will slow down the entire campus network.
Thus, it is highly recommended that our users should not run these peer-to-peer file sharing programs on the HKU campus network.