2008 Woodie Awards
Facebook no danger compared to viruses
Christine Rochelle
Issue date: 12/7/06 Section: News
In the past year, the University of New Mexico blocked access to Facebook due to unsolicited e-mails and a community college in Texas cut off access to the site it took up too much bandwidth on the network.
The popular social networking website has been the center of attention since its birth and now school administrators are considering the option of banning the website altogether. Instead of citing protection against predators, universities say that it takes up too much bandwidth, or frequency, on the campus network.
Justin Bassignani, Network Security Analyst at Marist College, said that it is not Facebook or MySpace that takes up bandwidth but rather file sharing.
The possible banning of Facebook at Marist is "not anywhere in the works," said Bassignani. With the present network configurations, the network is "fully saturated because we're oversubscribing." But Marist is looking to modify that configuration to improve usage.
"Most of the transfers [on the Marist network] are text space," said Bassignani. "The problem is streaming media."
Streaming media, according the Information Technology site, is "a method of distributing audio or video across the Internet that does not pre-download the whole media file (such as a movie or piece of music). Instead, the file is played as it is being downloaded."
Bassignani personally knows the dangers of not only downloading files, but downloading files that are copyrighted. When he was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for $5,000 for illegal downloading.
"People really need to wake up to [the dangers of downloading]," said Bassignani. He said that he feels guilty taking students off the network because of downloading, but it is not only to free up the bandwidth but also to prevent the situation that he had to deal with.
Students should also watch out for viruses that could infect their computer by using sites such as MySpace.
"It's easy to download a virus," said Bassignani. "It could cripple the entire network."
To avoid a possible virus, make sure you read the terms of agreement when downloading a file or joining a networking site like MySpace which is not as closely monitored as Facebook. The terms that you are agreeing to could mean that you are allowing others to put spyware on your computer.
Foxmail, which has been slow throughout the semester, is not sluggish because of lack of bandwidth but because of memory allocation issues that should be resolved by January 2007 with a virtual memory upgrade.
Overall, Facebook and MySpace won't affect the Marist network so greatly that a possible ban would be in the works. But, it could affect your personal computer so Bassignani said to always be careful.
"Keep your operating system patched and be a safe [Internet] surfer," said Bassignani.
The popular social networking website has been the center of attention since its birth and now school administrators are considering the option of banning the website altogether. Instead of citing protection against predators, universities say that it takes up too much bandwidth, or frequency, on the campus network.
Justin Bassignani, Network Security Analyst at Marist College, said that it is not Facebook or MySpace that takes up bandwidth but rather file sharing.
The possible banning of Facebook at Marist is "not anywhere in the works," said Bassignani. With the present network configurations, the network is "fully saturated because we're oversubscribing." But Marist is looking to modify that configuration to improve usage.
"Most of the transfers [on the Marist network] are text space," said Bassignani. "The problem is streaming media."
Streaming media, according the Information Technology site, is "a method of distributing audio or video across the Internet that does not pre-download the whole media file (such as a movie or piece of music). Instead, the file is played as it is being downloaded."
Bassignani personally knows the dangers of not only downloading files, but downloading files that are copyrighted. When he was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for $5,000 for illegal downloading.
"People really need to wake up to [the dangers of downloading]," said Bassignani. He said that he feels guilty taking students off the network because of downloading, but it is not only to free up the bandwidth but also to prevent the situation that he had to deal with.
Students should also watch out for viruses that could infect their computer by using sites such as MySpace.
"It's easy to download a virus," said Bassignani. "It could cripple the entire network."
To avoid a possible virus, make sure you read the terms of agreement when downloading a file or joining a networking site like MySpace which is not as closely monitored as Facebook. The terms that you are agreeing to could mean that you are allowing others to put spyware on your computer.
Foxmail, which has been slow throughout the semester, is not sluggish because of lack of bandwidth but because of memory allocation issues that should be resolved by January 2007 with a virtual memory upgrade.
Overall, Facebook and MySpace won't affect the Marist network so greatly that a possible ban would be in the works. But, it could affect your personal computer so Bassignani said to always be careful.
"Keep your operating system patched and be a safe [Internet] surfer," said Bassignani.
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