Handling User Grown Machines on a Large Network? 611
matth asks: "Recently with the outbreak of the MSBLASTER worm and the startup of the college semester here in the US we've been hit by a big problem here where I work. Many students are bringing in machines from home, often times infected. The infections are so bad that they bring the whole network to a crawl. Yes, you can install ACLs on edge routers and put a router between the dorms and the rest of your network, but it still brings the dorm to a crawl. You can make sure people install the patches, but what if someone re-installs Windows, or brings in another machine, and what about NEXT year? From the Slashdot community, how have sysadmins out there dealt with this? How can you manage each machine in a network such as a college, where people are bringing their own machines in from the outside? ACLs on routers... but what about for the segmented network?"
forcefully (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forcefully (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll need something more reliable than Windows if your plan is to mandate that sort of thing.
Re:forcefully (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:forcefully (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forcefully (Score:3, Insightful)
My client with the network browse issue won't listen to my advice about setting up a testbed for each model machine he has (which he can easliy afford, and he does have spare machines) or at le
Re:forcefully (Score:3, Informative)
Basically it Windows update server that you run yourself, you can approve which update it allows clients to download.
check it out.
Timing the cable failures (Score:3, Interesting)
It's amazing how many students seem to have wiring problems after they crash the local nets on certain campuses. I just wish the same approach could be applied to home users.
Many of the worms and viruses that bog the net have had patches for months or even years. I say if the patch was out three months ago, cut the user off at their ISP -- permanently.
You can't drive without a license -- if you can't update, you don't know how to "drive" the internet. And no, I really don't care about the "rights" o
Re:forcefully (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:forcefully (Score:4, Insightful)
My NVidia card worked fine (under Windows) before I installed Linux, and still all Linux people blamed the hardware, saying there is some known problem with DVI support in old NVidia cards.
Obviously, if you are developing OS (whether it is Windows or Linux) and don't have the benefit of being able to blame Gates or Linus for your bugs, there is still last chance: blame hardware!
Re:forcefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:forcefully (Score:3, Interesting)
That's when you set forth the rules.
Windows 2000/XP only, if it's a Windows environment, or MAC otherwise. Any machines found online that violate the policy will be denied access, and the violaters fined.
I know of a couple of small colleges that are MAC only; they don't support Windows machines of any kind. To ensure this, you buy the computer when you start your term--it's part of your tuition and fees. This way, no one brings in anything unauthorized from home.
Re:forcefully (Score:4, Insightful)
responsibility (Score:4, Interesting)
If you make them bear some financial responsibility for not checking their machines first this might help.
Re:responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Students go to university to learn and give back some knowledge, not to constantly maintain their tools.
Re:responsibility (Score:5, Funny)
So tired of this joke... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have any kind of insurance?
But surely you know that, like a lottery, insurance works because on average people pay more money into it than they receive from it. Lotteries and insurance are both gambles... except that in a lottery, you bet on good fortune. With insurance, you bet against bad fortune. In both cases, the expectancy value is less than 1, but in both cases you'll be damn glad you subscribed when your number's up.
I know I know, it's just a joke. Well, I just had to get this off my chest.
Re:So tired of this joke... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but the key difference between insurance and the lottery is that the dangers that you purchase insurance protection for are real and have a statistically significant chance of occuring to you. The lottery ticket that you buy provides you with a statistically insignificant chance to win a pile of money.
I agree that I would be pretty darn happy to have the winning ticket or an insurance policy if either one paid off, but my chances of needing the insurance are significantly greater (by orders of magnitude) than are my chances of winning the PowerBall.
That doesn't even consider the different insurances that we are required to have by law or by contract. Get pulled over by the police without liability insurance and see what happens. Try to get a mortgage on a house without homeowner's insurance. How about getting a bank to finance a car without comprehensive and collision coverage? They require that coverage, not because the chances of needing them are greater than zero but because the chances of needing them are significantly greater than zero.
Just food for thought, the Department of Transportation says that about 20 million vehicles are involved in accidents each year and an individual driver can expect to be in one, on the average, every six years. So, if I pay my $40 per month in liability insurance on my car, in 72 months I'll have paid $2880.00. Earlier this year, my wife got hit by a car in a low speed collision. After the medical bills, repair bills and rental car bills were paid, the grand total came out to be about $8000.00. Now, our insurance didn't pay, but you can bet that the other driver was damn glad to have a liability insurance policy.
-h-
Re:responsibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Schnier (sp) has been singing this song (from a corporate standpoint) for a while: the only way M$ will secure their products, and the only way companies will think about secure networks will be if they are held accountable for damage they cause.
He argues that security will be forced not by laws, but by insurance premiums. You (big corporation)
Public humiliation (Score:5, Interesting)
Naturally, if you're the BOFH type of network admin you can skip the first part
Re:Public humiliation (Score:3, Funny)
You could have a comparitive scale down the side, comparing the most inept to 'brick', ranging through 'hammer' and 'cabbage' with the cleverest compared to, say, '$10 digital watch'. You could have little iconic pictures on the scale to give it some colour.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
Re:Public humiliation (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that's going to have the effect you're looking for. The board is going to filled with a weird combination of the wholly computer illiterate (who could care less about their picture being up on some wa
attn: geeks (Score:3, Funny)
Simple... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that's what they get for forcing everyone to migrate to XP last year...
Re:Simple... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually (Score:4, Informative)
We havn't done it in our lab (there are multiple on campus) yet as there's no impending doom if we don't, but we're looking to secure our work area with a router that blocks all ports and then use 192.168.0.* IPs behind it. Which allows us to fresh install Windows or whatever and not have to worry about getting infected before we can get them up to date.
It'd be trivial for a University to setup such an area and if a user is trouble, kill their connection and call them and tell them to bring down their system to the secured lab to be patched and fixed.
My home network which has every flavor of Windows running was completely unaffected by the Blaster worm simply because I run a router intelligently.
It's really not that hard to not get infected.
Ben
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called AuthBridge [cmu.edu] and runs on a Linux machine with ethernet bridging and real time packet filtering based on the MAC address. See the link for technical descriptions, diagrams, and further details.
Seems to work quite seamlessly as an end user, IMHO.
Domain logons (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Domain logons (Score:2)
Great idea, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've found that to be very common (including the Uni that I'm typing this at) since it is MUCH easier to set freshman up on movein day.
Also, certain things do not work when you start logging onto domains. Example: XP's fast user switching. You'd have students complaining about the administration restricting their rights to their own computer, blah blah blah... then on top of it, automatically patching something. Legal nightmare. Works great for lab PCs, horrid for dorm PCs.
Re:Domain logons (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Domain logons (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Domain logons (Score:3, Insightful)
Once the machine is owned by a virus, patching it an
Re:Domain logons (Score:3, Insightful)
A worm has a bunch of properties that aren't desirable here:
Ban 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ban 'em (Score:2)
Re:Ban 'em (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ban 'em (Score:3, Insightful)
Network vulnerability scan (Score:3, Informative)
Possible solution (Score:5, Informative)
It might be a bit annoying to automate the process (except for handing out floppies) at first, but it seems like it could significantly help, while at the same time educating users to update their patches.
Re:Possible solution (Score:5, Insightful)
You could just... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You could just... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now don't get me wrong--I'm just as much a die-hard Linux advocate as anyone, but it's just not feasible to tell every kid on a college campus to suddenly switch operating systems. They're going to need to figure out how, and you're going to be the ones to tell them. This is going to send your costs through the roof.
He's trying to solve problems for his university, not create new ones.
Re:You could just... (Score:5, Interesting)
It all started when I helped a friend install Linux on his new computer. Unfortunately, in addition to installing a DHCP client on his machine, I had accidentally flagged the DHCP server to install as well. What happened was that the DHCP server software on his new Linux box was challenging the Windows DHCP server that the dorm was using, and his machine won -- even though his DHCP server wasn't properly configured to hand out IP addresses to other clients. So, all of these other 900 students would turn on their computers, which would send out a DHCP request, and they would get a response from his computer instead of the real DHCP server, thus causing their computers to give up trying to connect to the network. Ironically enough, his computer connected to the internet fine, as it was the only one connecting to the real DHCP server (I guess that explains his super-fast connection during that week).
Anyway, we had no idea that any of this was happening until we headed back to his dorm room one day, and found three network services guys looking in bewilderment at the computer (they had never used anything but Windows, so they had no idea how to fix it). They claimed that it took them a week to isolate the problem to his machine. They explained what was happening, and it then hit me that the DHCP server was also running on his machine, so I logged in, apt-get removed it, and the problem was immediately fixed. Not in their eyes though, as they made us talk to the head guy at network services... He gave us fair warning that if we did that again, our access to the network would be revoked (and rightly so!).
The obvious moral of the story is, whereas most OSes give you just enough rope to tie a knot, Linux gives you enough rope to hang about 900 people.
Re:You could just... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, well, so much is obvious. If you had done well, you'd probably have argued, incorrectly, that the plural for virus is viri (-us to -i, as in fungus to fungi). Virii is just BS, where would the second -i come from? Anyway, viruses is definitely the correct plural form as recognised by many dictionaries. For more information do a search and read something like this [google.com].
YES, THAT'S A GOOD IDEA (Score:5, Funny)
"Here. You'll never use this first item if you choose to use the second item. Have fun, and welcome to college."
You are sooooo fired.
Re:You could just... (Score:2)
As things stand today, the school's administrators would have to be certifiably insane to try something like that...Maybe in a controlled work environment you could get away with it, but not at a college- it'd be a toss-up between the tech support guys or angry students getting to kill you first.
Communist! (Score:2)
That it would help solve the problem, educate students a bit - probably leaving them far closer to computer literacy than anything else they'll do in college ... Thats all irrelevant. You are proposing something that is clearly unamerican, anti-capitalist, communistic, anarchistic, anti-christian, and so on.
I'd love to see it done.
Re:You could just... (Score:3, Funny)
Along with their free condoms, give 'em free Linux CDs.
Dude... you gotta follow the rules. It's ( condoms XOR Linux ).
Re:You could just... (Score:2)
Despite your wettest dreams, not everyone is going to be comfortable with computers no matter how important a tool it is, just like not everyone is comfortable dealing with every aspect of tax law or psychophys
Maybe give out some info to the people? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe give out some info to the people? (Score:3, Interesting)
one way. (Score:5, Informative)
Ensure that home machines (ones that you haven't configured) get IPs in a VLAN group which you've bandwidth throttled on the routers/switches along the say so the rest of the VLANs don't get choked by home-grown disasters.
Machines you have control over can get IPs in another VLAN which isn't throttled, or at least not as much as your "uncontrollable" VLAN. At the router where the VLANs can meet have strong ACLs and traffic flow control.
Just because you give them access with their own machines doesn't mean you have to give them unrestrained access.
VPN isolation (Score:3, Interesting)
Because you cannot control who uses the wireless zone, it's treated as potentially hostile or untrusted and users must authenticate to a VPN.
A nice side-effect of this is that the VPN in Windows routes all traffic via the VPN, letting them apply all sorts of policies "port 4444, I don't think so...". Blaster only affected users silly enough to bring in an infected machine.
Perhaps a similar setup for the untrusted wired network too?
managed switches (Score:5, Informative)
you could have an IDS (or similar) with a rule looking for specific attacks (ie blaster). when you detect such an attack, fire off a script that shuts down the user's port on the switch. they'll bitch and moan that they can't access the net but you'll know who they are now and charge them a cleanup fee (make sure to include it in the terms of use)
another solution is to require anyone bringing a computer from home to have it inspected by your techs, block access based on mac address and only give them access once they passed the test. it does require more ressources tho, and ideally you'd still need the first option (in case where someone reinstall windows)
diversity and not allow attachments (Score:2, Interesting)
Email should be used for communication, not for transfering files.
CB
File transfer & security holes (Score:2)
The problem with prohibiting email attachments is that this essentially pushes students in the direction of running servers on their personal computers in order to transfer files. This would be a much larger security hole.
If they're running Windows, they're likely to use the servers that come with the OS (http or ftp), which have much worse greater potential security holes than the email reader.
On top of this... (Score:2)
Deny them DNS services (Score:5, Interesting)
Chris
fix packets (Score:2, Informative)
I'm actually wanting to know the same thing, but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a student at a university whose dorm network got nailed by blaster something fierce. Almost as bad as it was Klezed a couple years before. Anyways, because of all of this, the sys admins decided to completely eliminate the dorm network from the upper campus one - also cutting off 'net access - during school hours. This is a real big pain in the butt, and I'm actually hoping there are some great answers in this topic so I can give them to my sys admin.
Of course, compounding the situation are seemingly (dunno if they actually are or not considering I've never even SEEN one before) incompetant dorm techs taking an entire day to clear out just one dorm building of ~50 rooms (2 people per room, but often less than 2 PCs per room...). Considering Blaster only affects 2000/XP/2003 machines, that means that the roughly 50 computers running those took 8 hours to clean? Something seems wrong here.
I'm just annoyed because my room (along with my entire hall since I'm the resident 'hey, call him!' computer geek and have patched everyone) is completely free of blaster and its ilk, yet I have to deal with the people who either don't know to patch Windows often, or don't care.
How about this one: What can a STUDENT at one of these schools do to help? I've tried teaching as many people as possible about computer safety (take a health classes' STD safety course, apply to computers basically), and I'm ineligable to become a dorm tech right now... anyone?
Re:I'm actually wanting to know the same thing, bu (Score:2)
How about this one: What can a STUDENT at one of these schools do to help? I've tried teaching as many people as possible about computer safety (take a health classes' STD safety course, apply to computers basically), and I'm ineligable to become a dorm tech right now... anyone?
Write your own exploit of the vulnerabilities that patches them, and force feed it to any computer spamming you with virus-born packets ;)
Re:I'm actually wanting to know the same thing, bu (Score:3, Informative)
unfortunately not -- updating random systems is harder that it seems. When we got hit at our university i helped out cleaning a bunch of systems and I couldn't believe how long it took -- Win2k installs had to have Service Pack 4 installed before you could apply the security patch for the worm, other dependancies changed because of that, had to in
Re:I'm actually wanting to know the same thing, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
50 computers over 8 hours = 9.6 minutes per computer, average. This time includes knocking on doors, explanations, going back to get rooms which were closed for some reason, booting up computers and rebooting them, loading the patches on to the machine and installing them, and all the regular crap that goes with handling 50 different computers
Re:I'm actually wanting to know the same thing, bu (Score:4, Funny)
running Mac OS X and I haven't had to lift a finger to do much of anything for more than a year
That's what I call a boring life. Compare this to the action packed life of a Windows(tm) Admin. I can imagine the next Microsoft tagline:
Windows: Bringing Unlimited Action to bored System Admins, since 1981.
Re:I'm actually wanting to know the same thing, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
I know for Lovsan our school links you, before network registration, to a page with the fix. Then if you get infected they kill your access. Then send up a tech. Sad thing is the average user can't even figure out how t
My Uni's policy (Score:2)
Re:My Uni's policy (Score:2, Informative)
And of course, block the right incoming traffic in the border routers.
I feel your pain... (Score:2)
There are no easy answers. Fortunately, I work in a small school, so I take the time to try and do updates on each machine when they come in. We run adaware on each, and then install the network version of Sophos so they are protected from viruses.
From that point, we have to hope that the firewall filters do their job in keeping out the junk, but i
Block E-Mail (Score:3)
- Block POP3 and SMTP access.
- Block trojan ports.
- Provide webmail access. (Even allow them to connect to their own email accounts elsewhere)
Outlook and Outlook Express are the two largest vectors for virii.DHCP tricks (Score:5, Funny)
start with the freshman handbook (Score:5, Funny)
Post lists (Score:5, Funny)
Assuming you can identify the port from which the infected traffic is coming, post a list of all infected rooms on the front door of the dorms, with an explanation that "these computers are causing your network to suck."
The problem will be fixed.
Re:Post lists (Score:3, Insightful)
mac address registration + managed AV software (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Require all machines to register their mac address via nice gui or website. This way when you use all the rest of the stuff mentioned here (snort, etc) you can easily track the student down.
2) Run snort, router, acls, etc in a way to automatically blocks infected users. Or at the very least it should at least alert you of them. But blocking is best so that they dont spread the infection further on your network or to the
Good question (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm assuming you have each computer connected to a central switch, right? What I would do is block all communication between the PCs on the network. Allow each one to get out to the internet through the firewall, but block them from connecting to each other. That would give them the ability to browse the web, check email, instant message, etc., without needing to worry about them setting up servers, file sharing, and trading viruses, etc., between each other. It's heavy handed, but at least you're still providing the service you're supposed to (internet connectivity).
Just a thought. I'm not completely sure this is even feasible with a switch, but I would think so.
Wonderful way to bring your network down... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that thought it so well thought out....
Kjella
Our Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Once the patch has been applied, we sit down with the user and assure them that they're not in trouble; everyone makes a mistake from time to time, and we have simple and effective means of dealing with the problem. Once they're calmed down and convinced that we're not upset with them, we wish them a good day and send them on their way.
When they turn their backs, we shoot them in the back of the head and put their bodies on display in the courtyard as an example to the rest of the imbiciles that might practice unsafe computing.
What is happening at my university... (Score:5, Informative)
Now that we well and truly cleared it after much scanning to make sure, we've moved on to the on-campus student's network.
We have to physically go to each room, patch and scan to remove both blaster and welchier.
It's both an annoyance for us and the students who pretty much treat us like unwanted guests on their pcs.
treat it like a small ISP (Score:2)
Bulk out a CD with the nessicary information and distribute them to the dorms. As part of the setup, point IE or netscape to someplace like http://housecall.trendmicro.com, or set up your own remote AV scanner. Make a completed scan part of the setup. If a machine doesn't do a complete scan, it doesn't get netwo
Change the network use agreement... (Score:2)
Provide everything needed to repair and secure computers on CD, so people can upgrade before they plug in and repair without being connected. Include detailed instructions.
DHCP madness. (Score:2)
Yes, so maybe it's a bit paranoid, but statically assigning DHCP based upon mac address is an easy enough way to keep *most* non-technical (virus laden) people off the (IP) network.
It also allows for a degree of control (umm... no your toaster oven can't be on the network.) Etc.
What I would do: (Score:2)
PPPoE... and something else (Score:2)
For the "something else," you have to get creative. I know I'm probably overlooking some well-devised currently existing system, but if you created a system whereby the PPPoE client would not funct
Inspection (Score:5, Interesting)
This is of course great in theory, until a week later when someone formats, 'forgets' to patch, brings their computer home, gets re-infected and comes back to school.
Until patches become mandatory for many of these users, there is no way to prevent such a thing... short of finding the virus writers and skinning them alive during prime time, that might make some of these script kiddies think twice before doing what they do.
Here is what we do (Score:5, Interesting)
This segmentation has helped dramatically. At one point, we were blocking nearly 800,000 icmp echo requests outbound/sec across all interfaces. Now? around 1k/sec. And that's over the last week.
Now if I could just get past the residents who:
1. Don't fix themselves because it was too much to read.
2. Don't know how to use a web browser
3. Don't know what a scroll bar is (!!!)
4. Don't contact us for help, but instead go to the President and Provost's offices.
Hang in there, segmentation helps dramatically.
Burn, burn, burn those patch CD's (Score:3, Interesting)
Recently, we've begun deactivated the ports of people who we've been able to trace the worm back to, having them call us, pick up the CD, install the patch and then having an RCC verify that the patch is installed before reactivating their ports. We've also closed off the ports that the worm is known to propagate through. We've still taken damage as a result of it, but I think we've managed to minimize it somewhat. In the meantime, I've been trying to convince the Mac users I support that they're not at risk. If you say, "impossible" enough times in a row, they start believing you.
Telling students what to do is not the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
My college [earlham.edu], in response to Blaster, Nachi, etc., recently told students to download a copy of Vexira Anti-virus, for which we have a site license. One of my non-CS friends (yes, /. geeks can have non-CS friends) did just that and, since she (yes, a female, at that) had little computing experience, deleted every infected file. I'm only a UNIX admin with very little Windoze experience, so I'm not sure if deleting the infected files had something to with it, but XP Home refused to go past the login screen. She has been going through something of a family crisis, so I was up until about 1 in the morning getting her machine back into working order without losing any data. I succeeded, but it was still pretty stressful. She didn't really care about having a clean computer; she just wanted a working computer.
In short, just telling students to download and run a program they don't understand to clean up their computers isn't going to work. At best, no one's going to do it, and at worst, it's going to f*ck people's computers up, creating more of a support mess.
Block everything but HTTP (Score:3, Informative)
In that configuration, they can surf the Internet freely, and can download anything they want, but can't mess up anyone else.
That's the default configuration. Students who want more have to go through the exercise of securing their machines, after which both the student and the machine get tested. Then they get more access.
Here's what we did. not perfect, but: (Score:4, Interesting)
We did some testing with the Blaster patch before we encouraged our users to download it; I always check Bugtraq, personally, before I put anything on a machine I'm responsible for. Once we decided it wasn't breaking anything (at least it didn't break anything for us) we burned it to a whole bunch of CDs (with the Symantec removal tool, the Win2k patch, the WinXP patch, and the WinNT fix). Each RA/helpkid/tech also got a corporate edition of NortonAV on a disk (we have a site license) with instructions for students on how to update their virus definitions.
Each RA got this disk. Each help desk kid (there are about 15 student help desk kids) got one, and the other five PC/net techs (other than me) got one. We marched around campus for about a week wearing very visible "TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS CENTER" T-shirts and essentially infiltrated dorm life with our antivirus software.
Were there huge network slowdowns? Oh yeah. For the first day and a half when students came back there was little, if any, network connectivity. But the RAs were adamant about having the kids run the patches and install NAV. Did we use guerilla tactics, like disabling network ports or confiscating network cable? No, not at all. We just made help extremely visible, and with a horde of student tech workers getting $5/hr, it was not so bad for cheap labor for the college, either.
You might bitch and moan and say that a college kid with a virus will never go talk to his RA, but we had mandatory floor meetings for every floor for every hall across campus, and when you've got 20 kids and one RA, it's pretty easy to reach the end users. Users only understand that "my computer doesnt work", and you can bet that a college kid at a small, tech-oriented campus will go see his RA if he knows his RA can help him. (If the kids think the RAs are totally bogus, then there's problems with administration that have nothing to do with computing and is for another thread entirely.)
Do these tactics make Mac/Linux users feel discriminated against? I saw some whining in the comments about this, but guess what: Even if an RA is minimally intelligent in the realm of computing, he can PROBABLY tell a Mac from a PC. Mac users get left alone (like me.)
Full network connectivity returned at about 9 in the morning on the day after move-in. (you'd be surprised how fast 30 RAs and 21 tech kids can move.)
You might also bitch and moan and say that students shouldn't have L2 domain admins. Okay, I can understand that. One kid got forcibly removed from our staff last year for leeching software off a drive he had permissions to, so no, it's not a completely perfect solution, and a lot of trust is involved. But it worked okay for us and minimized a lot of headaches.
Our University's Solution (Score:3, Informative)
To defend against this we're going scan all machines over the network during the registration process and if the machine is vulnerable the browser will get redirected to a webpage with the relevant patches which the client must apply or they won't be able to connect to anything but our internal authentication vlan.
One of the reasons our networks get hammered during any worm incident is that there are so many machines connected to the network that just aren't patched ever.. Eventually we just have to manually shut down the ports infected machines are connected to and wait till clients call to complain to explain why they've been disconnected.
Re:morons (Score:3)
Re:The state of employment. (Score:4, Funny)
Somebody has obviously made a serious mistake then. Can I suggest you apply at the sign of the Golden Arches to find something more commensurate with your intellectual abilities?
Re:Easy solution: (Score:2)
I'm curious, which university is this that you work at?
Re:Easy solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
This is so ridiculous that I'm still thinking you're joking. Either that or you haven't been in education for a long time.
I'm a CS student. We often have the choice of buying an outdated EUR 6 hardcopy of a lecture script (without TOC or index), printing some 200 pages (on a printer quota that's sufficient for 150) or viewing the constantly updated script on-screen with search functionality. This holds true for at least four courses per semester. Without PCs, we'd be royally screwed.
In most appartment buildings for students, the network is provided by the university over a 2MBit line with at least 10% packet loss, high lag and a 650MiB/month quota (traffic inside the uni network isn't counted). Bozos who don't get the rules get blocked at the inhouse switch.
If they'd try to ban PCs they'd get only one thing: open revolt. I mean the stuff with burning administration buildings. Literally. Plus it'd be mostly unenforceable in countries with things like individual freedom. Oh, there's also the need to at least quadruple the number of terminals across the campus.
Re:No more (Score:3, Funny)
I am seriously considering moving my smaller clients to Mac of Linux pretty soon
Hmm... sounds interesting, got a torrent ?
To start with .. (Score:3, Interesting)
MAC address filtering would bring out at least one privacy advocate complaining about rights, and absolute Nazi like controls won't fly at a public institution.
Everybody seems to be advocating the staff doing stuff, do they have the resources to handle every little issue a student comes up with?
VLANs with heavily controlled QoS would help. I also like a script forcing certain patches.
Re:To start with .. (Score:4, Informative)
This happened to a friend of mine recently, only it was a hardware fault. The fact is that after fans, hard disks are the most failure-prone pice of equipment in the computer.
There is only one thing you can really do about this: Back it up.
If you are likely to be on the receiving end of the complaints, you may find it helpful to provide a backup service. It should consist of the following components:
Remember, the more the student body is involved and empowered (euphemism for being told it is their own responsibility), the less you will have to do about it.
If you really want to over-egg the pudding you might even make versioned backups available, so they can find what they had six weeks ago -- might be useful for some.
Good luck.
Re:No more (Score:5, Informative)
Still, you can very easily deal with it.
1. Move dorms to private addresses so that you do not have an address space constraint as the next step will eat addresses like there is no tomorrow.
2. Subnet the network into a small salad and put each slice of the salad into a separate VLAN.
3. 802.1q the vlans up to a linux box, bsd box or a cisco that has enough grunt to filter (72xx VXR or similar comes to mind, bigger ones have a hard time filtering, smaller ones cannot handle the bandwidth).
4. Filter on all 802.1q interfaces on the linux/bsd/cisco.
As a result you contain any clap to a small subnet.
Note that everybody will hate you initially. People definitely did hate me 8+ years ago as this was one of the things I did to deal with a similar problem (one dept in the building I managed was being hacked left right and center).
Re:No more (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course this only works if you have managed switches/hubs, a bunch