Apparently, UCI Resnet doesn't understand their own network...
They seem to have some network performance issues, and instead of actually getting people who understand networks, they decided to just cap the bandwidth for everybody...
Needless to say, that didn't go well with a lot of people, and they got flooded with complaints.
Their standard answer was this boilerplate stuff:
Due to the connection instability experienced by various housing complexes, we have decided to focus first on providing a reliable and consistent connection speed on the internet, then secondly about providing higher speeds on a stable connection. We are currently working on the stability and reliability portion. As a result, the speed cap has been set at 2Mbp/s, and will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future.
But it seems the pressure from the complaints got too big. So, today they emailed this out:
Due to the numerous concerns for bandwidth restrictions, we have decided to go ahead and release the cap temporarily to see its effect on our network. If you notice any degradation in network stability, please let us know.
Except where otherwise noted, this content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
He speaks the oath as I write this.
What a great moment!
Except where otherwise noted, this content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Recently, I have learned that CCA apparently can not detect certain configurations of the Windows Internet Connection Sharing system.
If the Internet Connection Sharing is working in NAT mode, only IP address translation is done, and multiple network card identification numbers, called MAC addresses, are visible to the outside world. That is detectable by CCA.
However, if the Internet Connection Sharing is working in Bridge mode, each shared machine gets its own IP address, and CCA can't detect that.
The CCA client agent, which is installed on the client Windows machine (no client agent for Linux...) can detect the presence of an Connection Sharing registry entry, but apparently, that registry entry exists even if connection sharing is switched off. That nicely demonstrates the futility of this whole idea of having a program run on the client computers, testing these things. Cisco always has to reverse-engineer all programs that they want to check for, and such reverse-engineering, aside from possibly being illegal under the DMCA, is highly ineffectual. All it does is provide for job security for Cisco engineers (granted, that counts for something in today's economy
)
Except where otherwise noted, this content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
People continue to be concerned about the privacy implications of an invasive system like CCA.
That's why there continue to be a number of programs out there to bypass the CCA installation.
Here is another one I have come across, which claims to be working with all CCA versions. Of course, as always, use at your own risk and don't blame me or the author of that program if your computer locks up or if you get into trouble with your network administrators.
Competent network administrators would provide an opt-out or would only mandate use of the CCA client after a virus/bot incident. If your school has such network administrators, consider yourself lucky. The UCI Resnet administrators, unfortunately, dismissed such suggestions.
Resnet has a newer version of CCA installed, so my Perl script to automatically log in didn't work anymore.
A kind soul has adapted the script to work with the latest installation and sent it to me. So, here is the update.
Except where otherwise noted, this content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
:: Next >>