Originally Posted by Kevin

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?

http://dcplusplus.sourceforg e.net/

In addition to what lorend said, it works through the LAN connection on the school network, which I believe doesn't contribute to the bandwidth limit.

Yes, the University will know if you're using torrents. Torrents use special ports (usually TCP 6881-6999) that tend to seriously slow down the network, especially when you're seeding.

daaaaaamn it says its only for windows...does anyone know if it will work on a mac? (i don't really want to install windows aswell, but i may have to)

It looks like it does
http://sourceforge.net/projects/macdcpp/

OK I'm going to try and tackle as many of these questions as possible.

At Mac the DC++ works as follows: One student (usually an upper year tech-savvy student) will get it up and running and you will soon hear word that it's ready to use. You download and install the program, and basically pick and choose files on your computer that you want to share (allow others to download from you). You're going to want to share your music, movies, games, and whatever other media files you may want. If everyone does this, there will be a large collection of STUFF to download. If you're bored one night in rez, search for a movie and you'll most likely be able to download it. Also, since it's exclusive to the Mac LAN, speeds are blazing. You'll be able to download entire music albums in literally 2 seconds. Usually you'll get anything between 5 - 20 megabytes per second. I believe there is a version of DC++ that works for a Macintosh computer, called Shakespeer. I never checked it out because I have Windows, but check it out once you move into rez.

A word about torrents: The McMaster firewall is quite comprehensive, and blocks almost all ports that can be used for torrents. I tried it a few times myself and got pathetic speeds (in the neighbourhood of < 1kb/s). I heard rumours that some people were getting normal torrent speeds but never saw any proof of it. So your best bet is probably to stick to DC++.

On the other hand, if I ever missed an episode of LOST it was usually up on DC++ a couple hours after it was on TV, so someone on campus must have been downloading it. How they went about doing this, I'm not sure. If you're very tech-savvy, you'll be fine.

If you exceed the bandwidth limit, McMaster will choke your bandwidth for the next 24 hours. This can be very annoying because you'll have trouble doing simple things like loading web pages and using MSN. So I suggest doing everything in moderation so you don't cause yourself the inconvenience.

With regards to gaming, you should be able to connect to public servers on most of your PC games. My roommate, who had a powerful gaming PC with tons of online games, was able to play Battlefield, CounterStrike Source, and everything else on the regular public servers. Also, many of the people on DC++ like to organize regular games of CounterStrike 1.6 through LAN. It's pretty fun, but be prepared to get your ass handed to you most of the time .

That's about all I know for now, good luck!

Originally Posted by lucc

On the other hand, if I ever missed an episode of LOST it was usually up on DC++ a couple hours after it was on TV, so someone on campus must have been downloading it. How they went about doing this, I'm not sure. If you're very tech-savvy, you'll be fine.

There are other ways that don't require you to open ports..

Right... Hence:

Originally Posted by lucc

If you're very tech-savvy, you'll be fine.

Lucky for me I'm not living in residence so I can download stuff the normal way and not worry about it!

What about XBox Live?

There are always ways of making the banned stuff work!
As far as banned websites are concerned. One can easily just tunnel through to them without getting detected. Songs and videos are no problem as they can easily be ripped from internet radios or youtube.
Will proxy through the wireless connection to avoid detection.......
Torrents banned !!!!
I shall immediately start working on a solution to get arnd the problem.
BTW- Does SSH security shell work on campus?

Nikhil

First off, unless something's changed in the last couple of years (which may well be possible), torrents aren't banned, but severely throttled using packet-shaping software on the MacOnline servers. This means it could take days to download something, but trust me, if this policy wasn't in place, the whole residence network would grind to a halt and even just web access would be painfully slow. It's happened before - in the heyday of the original Napster and the programs that followed it (i.e., my first year), 'net access was horribly slow because there was initially no internal sharing network and no external throttling (and that was just for music, movies are obviously way worse). Then RezX (the predecessor to DC++) came in, and they started using the packet-shaping software, and things magically got better. No one really complained because what we ended up with was far superior anyway. Fresh content always finds a way onto the internal network somehow, anyway (via either patient people or the relative few who are able to get regular torrent download speeds).

Next, there are no "banned websites" that I know of, and I'm not sure where you got that idea. And if you're satisfied with the quality of ripping songs off of internet radio and videos off of YouTube, then you have pretty low standards, frankly - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with DC++. As for "proxy[ing] through the wireless connection to avoid detection", you're forgetting that, a) the wireless network is NOT part of the residence network and you won't even be able to access it from your room, and b) it's not an unsecured network - you have to log in with your username and password anyway. Sure, you may be able to connect to a proxy regardless, but I'm not sure what you're trying to avoid having 'detected' - as I said before, there aren't any banned websites that I know of, and this isn't exactly a police state...

SSH works on the academic side of the network, but I never had occasion to use it on the residence network, so I don't know for sure. What I do know is that talking about manipulating the network on a board that is clearly read by Mac network analysts probably isn't the smartest move.

Firstly i thank cippi for all the advice...........i shall stay tight lipped from now on.

If SSH works in the rez..........then we have a solution to all the torrent throttling. What this means is that we can remotely access our computers back home. And our comps at home can download the required torrents for us! This would be working arnd the problem and not doing anything against the law of the land. Also theres no clause in the code of conduct even mentioning tunneling.

As far as ripping is concerned- I only cited youtube because it seems to be the most popular out of the others and easily understood even by the not-so-tech-savvy public. Pandora, for instance, streams all their songs at 128kbps. Last.fm streams at variable bit rates ranging upto 320kbps. Ripping off them is good enough for me. Now if ur only into flac quality sound, im afraid ripping aint for u. But then im sure most the songs on dc++ wont be in flac quality either....so ud have to shell out extra cash in order to purchase em(and btw even if uve got the money, not all songs are available in flac quality).

is there a way to check how much bandwidth you've used up so you can make sure you don't go over the limit?

Nikhil I'm not sure if you realize this, but on DC++ the majority of music available will be CD quality. For the most part, either it will have been downloaded by any number of programs/torrents, or ripped from a real copy of the CD. So I don't think you're going to have any trouble finding quality copies of whatever songs you wish to download via DC++.

I don't know if what I wrote made any sense, but let me put it this way:
I'm at home right now, I download a CD-quality rip of an album via torrents/limewire/etc. I move into residence and share that album on DC++. Then you have access to said album. Easy as that! And sorry if I was being redundant

so i notice it says you can only use the mac smtp server... really?

does that mean my mail.app accounts won't work? if i have to put in a google smtp outgoing server, would mac really block that? and why?

ok, going back about a thousand steps for those of us who aren't so tech savvy...

do i need an ethernet cable to access the internet in res, or is it all wireless?

residence doesn't have wireless. you will need an ethernet cable. on the day you move in, there are some tech tables that give them out, but incase you shuold bring your own too. just incase you can't find it or something. can't live without internet.