Torrenting in the space

[tgreer]

Ladies and Gents

This is not on.

http://i.imgur.com/AswEccm.png

I found this on tesla...

No wonder we've burned through 21Gb on A&A and 135Gb on Zen in 4 days.

This needs to stop. If you want unfiltered internet then stop this bullshit.

[Tim Reynolds]

Check the date added on both of those torrents. Does the camera cover Tesla? 

This is absolutely unacceptable. 

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[tom]

in the meantime replace both downloaded files with images of "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" and see who gets freaked out

[Henry Sands]

Make it harder? block ports?

[Mark Steward]

Which ones?

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Henry Sands <hfs...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Make it harder? block ports?

[Henry Sands]

good point.....

[wyan std]

Is it possible to filter torrents explicitly?

[Mark Steward]

Nope, that's one of their design features.  We could add some punitive traffic shaping if it becomes a problem, though.

[Jasper Wallace]

On Tue, 4 Jun 2013, Mark Steward wrote:

> Nope, that's one of their design features. �We could add some punitive traffic shaping if it becomes a problem, though.

The problem is exasabated at the moment cos our monitoring of how much
traffic we've used is broken due to this:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=665452

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[SamLR]

tl;dr do we actually have a policy on torrenting/'net use in general, as far as I know we don't beyond "be excellent to one another". If we have up/download limits I'm assuming this needs to change.

I think before we go looking for technical solutions we just make it clear what our policy on torrenting is. As far as I know the policy has been "don't take the piss", "only when net use is low".

If our new broadband has download/upload limits obviously this needs to change (I'd assume to "dont") but even then there are likely to be caveats (e.g. downloading ubuntu).

PS I'm going to repost this as I think it actually needs to be discussed and a decisions made

[Mark Steward]

I think this has the potential to become a massive bikeshed thread, so some facts before we get into the debate.

We have a 1Tb/month download limit on Zen (but no upload limit), and a 150Gb/month limit on the A&A link.  We were graphing traffic, and we'll get that working again as soon as possible (it's the first I've heard of it).  The plan at the moment is to see how it goes, but we've also got some "piss-taker" scripts that can throttle individual machines in case it becomes a problem.

Downloading copyrighted torrents may result in us having our internet taken away from us, and it's a piece of fairly important infrastructure.  This is separate to the bandwidth issue.

Mark

[William Hay]

On 4 June 2013 11:17, Mark Steward <marks...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think this has the potential to become a massive bikeshed thread, so some facts before we get into the debate.

We have a 1Tb/month download limit on Zen (but no upload limit), and a 150Gb/month limit on the A&A link.  We were graphing traffic, and we'll get that working again

So with no upload limit on Zen files we should be concerned with copyright and the possibility of torrents flooding the uplink but not the bandwidth quota?

We should probably try to ensure they don't use the A&A link if that's upload limited though 

[tgreer]

Bandwidth isn't the big issue here... It's the abuse of the space network for torrenting and the potential for getting mauled for copyright infringement. 

[Mark Steward]

When there's no upload limit, this just means it's up to Zen[1], and all upload involves a small download overhead (especially for torrents).  If you torrent Ubuntu to burn a CD, I think it's reasonable to wait for a seed ratio of 1, but leaving it running for weeks is a risk to the common resource again.

The real problem (as I see it) is that some people are drawn to use the Hackspace internet to download large copyrighted files because they don't want to waste their own bandwidth.

Mark

[1] http://www.zen.co.uk/policies.aspx?page=10673

[William Hay]

On 4 June 2013 11:45, tgreer <ukt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Bandwidth isn't the big issue here... It's the abuse of the space network for torrenting and the potential for getting mauled for copyright infringement. 

Apart from copyright infringement and bandwidth concerns why are you characterising torrenting (or this specific instance of torrenting) as abuse?   

[tgreer]

Because it's the one likely to get us screwed.

[William Hay]

On 4 June 2013 12:17, tgreer <ukt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Because it's the one likely to get us screwed.

How apart from copyright infringement?  Would you object to someone torrenting Debian Wheezy DVDs and Sita sings the blues?  What about TPB-AFK?

[Tim Reynolds]

Tormenting is usually use for large files. ISOS. Movies. Whatever. The copyright infringement is one issue, sucking up loads of our bandwidth allowance and making the connection unusable for others is another. This issue will not go away by shouting "LINUX ISOS AND CREATIVE COMMONS!" 

[William Hay]

On 4 June 2013 15:03, Tim Reynolds <t...@christwithfries.net> wrote:

Tormenting is usually use for large files. ISOS. Movies. Whatever. The copyright infringement is one issue, sucking up loads of our bandwidth allowance and making the connection unusable for others is another. This issue will not go away by shouting "LINUX ISOS AND CREATIVE COMMONS!" 

We appear to be going around in circles.  This particular sub-thread started from my POV with tgreer asserting bandwidth not to be the big issue but rather abuse of the network and copyright and continued with me trying to extract from him what, apart from bandwidth and copyright, he means by abuse of the network.  Making the connection unusable (other than by exhausting our quota) sounds like the sort of issue that could be addressed by throttling rather than blocking bittorrent.

[Mark Steward]

I'm not sure what kind of response you're after - why do you need another reason?  Nobody's suggesting blocking torrents.

[William Hay]

On 4 June 2013 16:21, Mark Steward <marks...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not sure what kind of response you're after - why do you need another reason?  Nobody's suggesting blocking torrents.

I don't need another reason I just want to know what all the reasons people have are.   Generally I find it is a good idea to know what the problems are so

as a)not to cause them by accident and b)so one can try to mitigate them.

Doing X is bad because of copyright,bandwidth and unspecified problem Y.

Doing Z doesn't have issues with bandwidth or copyright but otherwise has some similarities to X.  Does it cause problem Y?  No idea because it is not specified.

Example Z:  Patching my laptop while in the space using packages downloaded via debtorrent  which according to the blurb works in a "bittorrent-like" manner.

The packages are liberally licensed and a lot smaller than the ISOs and movies Tim appear to be worried about.

[tgreer]

2 points have been made:

1) stop torrenting illegal stuff in the space

2) be considerate of the bandwidth you're using. Nobody's going to object to you patching your install... unless you're doing it 5 times a day!

[Mark Steward]

You might want to view this in the light of our proposed Internet Use Policy:

  http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Internet_Use_Policy

We're planning to use traffic shaping to stop anyone inadvertently affecting others, but you should still consider how much you may be affecting others.  I'd be concerned if someone brought a dozen laptops in to update, for instance.  Unspecified problem Y looks suspiciously like a straw man, but torrent software does put a higher load on routers due to the number of simultaneous connections.

Mark

[Monty]

The general problems are:

1) Saturation. Someone with a greedy setup can render the network to a crawl for other users; be excellent and throttle your programs appropriately.
2) Download quota. We only have so much, we want to share it out evenly and not go over; be excellent and download only what you need.
3) Copyright infringement. We're not beyond the law and we're not here to serve as someone's political platform on legal reform; so be excellent and be a good citizen.

It's all commonsense stuff really. Be excellent, be informed, be aware.

[Jonty Wareing]

Exceptionally well written Monty. I shall be quoting this in the future.

--jonty

[codeoclock]

Even if we could block torrenting, I don't think that'd be a great idea. Some people use torrents for legit purposes. Obviously for hackspace preservation we need to not have anyone breaking the law, and any good suggestions of making that happen are very welcome.

In the interest of preserving bandwidth however, rather than having people download Ubuntu whenever they need it, it might be a good idea to keep local copies of the latest release versions of several linux distros, and other software that would be handy (Arduino IDE anyone?) to avoid downloading the same things multiple times. Maybe even some legit movie torrents of interest to the community, perhaps like TPB AFK, could go in there as well. (who is going to be the first to say "well volunteered"? :P)

How much would unlimited bandwidth cost, and is it even feasible to aim at some point to be able to get it?

[Jonty Wareing]

> How much would unlimited bandwidth cost, and is it even feasible
> to aim at some point to be able to get it?

a) Lots
b) Yes, in the far off future

We have unlimited upload and 1TB download at the moment. We're not
even close to using all the download allowance so its not really a
worry. The issue here is people saturating the upload making the
connection unusable for other people.

It is likely that we might just cap the upload per-IP to stop
people accidentally dominating the connection. This isn't
something that we need to go crazy over.

--jonty

[Tim Reynolds]

i'm not concerned about them, I could just see the way this was going.
See Monty's sum up.

On 04/06/2013 16:57, William Hay wrote:
>
>
>
> On 4 June 2013 16:21, Mark Steward <marks...@gmail.com

> <mailto:marks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure what kind of response you're after - why do you need
> another reason? Nobody's suggesting blocking torrents.
>
> I don't need another reason I just want to know what all the reasons
> people have are. Generally I find it is a good idea to know what the
> problems are so
> as a)not to cause them by accident and b)so one can try to mitigate them.
>
> Doing X is bad because of copyright,bandwidth and unspecified problem Y.
> Doing Z doesn't have issues with bandwidth or copyright but otherwise
> has some similarities to X. Does it cause problem Y? No idea because
> it is not specified.
>
> Example Z: Patching my laptop while in the space using packages
> downloaded via debtorrent which according to the blurb works in a
> "bittorrent-like" manner.
> The packages are liberally licensed and a lot smaller than the ISOs and
> movies Tim appear to be worried about.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 4:13 PM, William Hay <w....@ucl.ac.uk
> <mailto:w....@ucl.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On 4 June 2013 15:03, Tim Reynolds <t...@christwithfries.net

> <mailto:t...@christwithfries.net>> wrote:
>
> Tormenting is usually use for large files. ISOS. Movies.
> Whatever. The copyright infringement is one issue, sucking
> up loads of our bandwidth allowance and making the
> connection unusable for others is another. This issue will
> not go away by shouting "LINUX ISOS AND CREATIVE COMMONS!"
>
> We appear to be going around in circles. This particular
> sub-thread started from my POV with tgreer asserting bandwidth
> not to be the big issue but rather abuse of the network and
> copyright and continued with me trying to extract from him what,
> apart from bandwidth and copyright, he means by abuse of the
> network. Making the connection unusable (other than by
> exhausting our quota) sounds like the sort of issue that could
> be addressed by throttling rather than blocking bittorrent.
>
>
>
> On 4 Jun 2013, at 13:47, William Hay <w....@ucl.ac.uk

> <mailto:w....@ucl.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 4 June 2013 12:17, tgreer <ukt...@gmail.com

>> *tl;dr* do we actually have a

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[David Murphy]

It's a hackspace, we don't have the resources to hire a full time admin and everyone has physical access to the machines meaning the network security is pretty much entirely on the honor system anyway. 

Trying to lock things down would probably be less effective than just asking people. 

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 11:31 PM, Michael Yuen <mikey...@gmail.com> wrote:

As a fairly new member, probably not fully used to the way things work... I would chip in my 2 cents for what its worth...

Philosophically, I do not like the idea that my membership dues are being used to provide services for people to break the law. Given the screen shot provided, that is undoubtedly what happened here.

The extreme answer to this problem would be to restrict normal internet access to members only and assign each member a unique login to the shared computers, wifi and network. At which point we could trace any illegal activity to the list of logged in users. Non-members might get locked down & proxied http only access. Thats work and makes the space less fun.

On Tuesday, 4 June 2013 03:33:21 UTC+1, tgreer wrote:

Ladies and Gents

This is not on.

http://i.imgur.com/AswEccm.png

I found this on tesla...

No wonder we've burned through 21Gb on A&A and 135Gb on Zen in 4 days.

This needs to stop. If you want unfiltered internet then stop this bullshit.

--

[Jasper Wallace]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2013, tgreer wrote:

> Ladies and Gents
> This is not on.
>
> http://i.imgur.com/AswEccm.png
>
> I found this on tesla...
>
> No wonder we've burned through 21Gb on A&A and 135Gb on Zen in 4 days.
>
> This needs to stop. If you want unfiltered internet then stop this bullshit.

The bandwidth meter now alternates between showing the current usage on
Zen and A&A. It's proably only worth getting excited about it if it's in
the yellow or higher over 10 mins tho.

The display shows the usage over the last:

5 secs - this will hit the max frequently from
people quickly downloading small files

1 min - will also peek from time to time

10 mins - if it's in the red then we have a problem (tm).

/me runs a steam update :P

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