Hey there!

Does anyone know the combined download/upload bandwidth limit (MB/day for instance) for a student living on residence? The MacOnline Terms and Conditions website is somewhat ambiguous about bandwidth usage as it talks about imposing limitations for users exceeding a limit, but doesn't specifically say what that limit is. I emailed MacOnline this inquiry about three weeks ago and haven't received a response so I figured posting here would be the next best option =)

Also (and I know this is probably a longshot), is it possible to obtain a list of ports that are blocked from the network? I'm not going to attempt anything malicious, I just use certain programs (irc, gaming, etc) that require ports which aren't exactly embraced by University networks.

Thanks in advance!

2 Gigabytes/day bandwidth limit for Internet sites. Exceeding that amount limits your Internet bandwidth for the following day (24 hours).



Blocked protocols:

• Microsoft Networking protocols are blocked.
• IRC is blocked.
• Outbound SMTP is restricted to McMaster provided SMTP server (smtp1.mcmaster.ca). Note- this doesn’t affect Web Mail.

There is a firewall, but it doesn't block anything other than what's mentioned above, in the outbound direction. It works the same as most firewalls installed locally on computer's today.

-Mike

Thanks for the post Mike!

but you won't be downloading from the internet as much as you think as torrents are banned. but if you live on res you get DC++ which has speeds up to 10 mb/sec and able to get almost anything like movies that are playing in theaters, games that just came out, shows that u missed an hour earlier

Thanks for the replies thus far!

I've actually been transitioning out of the torrent mindset lately since my home ISP (Rogers Cable) is enforcing their torrent throttle policy, which kills download speeds and renders seeding virtually impossible, thus making everyone slow leachers.

2 Gb/day is actually quite good compared to what other schools are getting and practically matches Rogers' bandwidth cap (60 Gb/month). Mind you, I still average around 6-7 Gb/day at home, so I'll have some cutting back to do ;-)

if ur looking for movies or songs there r plenty of websites to stream from instead of downloading lik RadioBlogClub, peekvid, stage6, etc

That's true williamhend, and I'm also going to add alluc and tv-links to that list =)

However, just keep in mind that streaming is the exact same as downloading in terms of bandwidth usage, so it does contribute to the limit.

you guys have made my head hurt. :S

If you want to use IRC, just get a cheap shell somewhere. I'm pretty sure IRC isn't blocked on the regular Mac Connect on campus.

Originally Posted by gregster

If you want to use IRC, just get a cheap shell somewhere. I'm pretty sure IRC isn't blocked on the regular Mac Connect on campus.

Are you sure? I've tried using IRC with both rez-net as well as the wireless Mac Connect in the student centre. Neither works for me. =(

Ah, sorry, my mistake. I remember now that I was connecting to my BNC, not directly to IRC.

What is DC++ exactly, is it kind of like torrents? Also how do I get it? And if I try to dl torrents using like bittorent will the university know?

DC++ used in res at Mac. That's about all I can tell you. I have no idea what the rest of your questions even mean.