I’m hope this will eventually go down the road that apartments and satellite dishes went. With a decision the side of a free and open market. I’m just not sure that a university can up and decide to restrict the free market for the students. First, it doesn’t teach students to make wise financial choices, second college costs enough without some mandatory phone bill. The forward thinking school would junk the phone and do all VOIP services. But what do I know, my school blocked all free dial-up accounts, which we used to thwart websense, they also blocked all p2p services, umm and facebook.

The universities and government should be looking at how to sell all services. I am a VAR for Charter Communications, Dell Computers, Cisco Systems and others. Plus Vonage has a link on their web if you sign up someone you get referral credit. This is a great way to get your phone for free and or get some cash out of the deal. Why not look into making money by promoting all services.

Yes even cell phone services are paying to promote which means if people are still supporting the 1960 copper wire they need to give up and look outside the box.

this is another way to force the students to use their networks and make even more money per semester

The telcos for the most part realize what many say on these posts. In the long run, they can’t win the switched vs internet phone battle outright. But to delay is golden. This gives them time to ‘branch out’ into other, more lucrative businesses, like hosting, IP services, etc. The longer they can keep the VoIP business from ascendancy, the longer they have to make inroads into other ventures. Kinda like the way MSFT plays against its competitors – delay, delay, delay. Then, they’ve won.

granted that it is uber lame for anyone to ban skype, but circumvent it by using gizmo which is just as good if not better.

If you are unhappy with your university banning Skype then once your semester is over, attend a different university. That is also free market economics. Something you must understand: In the United States of America, where you spend your money speaks louder then your words. If you hate telcos then cancel your service. If your university bans Skype then attend another university. If you hate the Japanese then stop buying Hondas. Etc. etc. etc.

who are you talking to

Yes, I’m one of the pesky students that’s been blogging constantly about this since we broke this story. I can tell you some of the reasons that the University has given are just not in tune with reality. For instance, the University’s claim that it has been eating up bandwidth. Skype is a fringe program at best (for now) at SJSU.
Secondly, any P2P program has the inherant security risks that Skype has; that’s their very nature. Therefore, I do not see the logic of banning one without banning all unless there is a profit motif involved here.

Have any comments of your own to make on it? Skype Journal’s Phil Wolff will be hosting a Skype conference on the issue Tues. at 5:00 pm. You can join online or in person (SJSU, Dwight Bentel Hall, Room 226). Everyone’s invited, since EVERYONE has something to add.

http://thesoapboxprophet.blogspot.com/

My dad owns a business and often is given crazy contracts to sign, like a 6 year trash contract with crazy fines if you want to cancel. So he rewrote their contract and made it look like the one they sent him. Signed that and made copies. Then sent it back. No one has ever cought such changes so far. Universities could do the same thing so they don’t have to aggree to dumb restrictions. Last year my dorm phone only got used when the deans called us. So we didn’t even hook one up this year. Now I havn’t had to deal with them at all 😀

…, VoIP will be too.

…Skype relies on user’s machines to become call routers. No university is going to pony up precious bandwidth to a commercial entity free of charge. Get off your high horse. Skype doesn’t have an intrinsic right to San Jose State’s network, nor do SJ State’s faculty and staff have some kind of innate right to run whatever apps they want.

Virtually none of the comments here show anyone thinking about anything other than themselves. I wrote a chapter on Skype in the business word for Syngress and I had to put a disclaimer in the chapter which Syngress supported that said in a butshell, that I could not in good concience suggest to anyone to use Skype in the business world. That includes schools. There are a number of issues with Skype and many revolve around legalities. For example, in the case of suspected IP theft (intellectual property), you must have a trail showing what was taken, where and how it was moved out of the company and where it went to. Skype allows someone to bypass ALL the network security both inbound and outbound, the IM, the voice and the files are encrypted which normally is against most company IT policies, there is not an “end point” to provide tracking log files ( ie, this call went to this number at this time and this date) and so on.

A secondary issue was mentioned and that is that someone PAID for the IT infrstructure to provide a certain level of performance. Who ever PAID for this has the right to say yes or no to ANY application that uses the bandwidth. The courts have already said that the computer AND the infrastructure provided to you are COMPANY PROPERTY and the company has complete control over it. You as the employee do NOT have a resonable expection of privacy using company infrasture and equipment. Using Skype for example, is seen as bypassing company rules and rights. I was on a case where IM was used to pass IP to a competitor but in the case of MS IM, there are ways to break the otional encryption and MS has log files of all coversations unlike Skype.

At my current gig, if you are caught using Skype or other unapproved telcom applications, they will fire you on the spot due to the risk of industrial espionage which is a very real threat whether you want to belive it or not. Not all nations are friendly to us and many of our “friends’ will and are trying to get an advantage over us so why give them a helping hand?

Some say “well, if Skype is so bad, why dont you ban IM?” Why not indeed? If I had my way, it would ALL be banned unless controlled by IT and blessed by the legal eagles. Or as I’ve done in the past, use something like Bluecoat which allows you to use Yahoo IM by “reflecting” conversations back into the LAN between employees and blocking any outside coverstations. It’s a nice compromise. There are internal solutions for IM like Sametime and others which work as well but are not “free”. You get what you what you pay for if you are lucky.

I’m the senior network admin at a University in Texas components. We have some restrictions on Skype and P2P in general. We have an edge device in place that looks for specific strings in older versions of Skype (with known security holes) and blocks their use. Any version that does not have a known exploit is allowed. All P2P traffic is allowed, but restricted to a total at the edge of 32k up and 64k down by means of a bandwidth throttle…We do not ban – We limit…and with 18,000 plus users I do mean we really limit!

Skype works just fine, but try downloading a movie at that speed over a shared connection. We have not had a single letter from the RIAA or MPAA since we put these policies in place.

I also run the phone system and we are the ISP and the TELCO. We could care less what type of phone service our students use. In fact, the demand is so low due to cellular use that we no longer offer them wired service. Many have Vonage and other VOIP services which is also just fine with us.

Our student’s fees pay for our network. It belongs to them, and all of the people of the State of Texas, not to me and the other admins. As long as they use the bandwidth and refrain from abusing it, then aside from blatantly illegal use (like kiddie porn) it’s none of my business what they are doing on-line.

We have enough problems worrying about which idiot faculty member is placing personally identifiable data at risk at any given moment to sweat about what activities the students are indulging in over the net.

Finally, a network admin with principles. I commend you. I am an admitted heavy P2P user but I do see the point of how colleges must protect themselves for being sued over the activities of 10k students. That part is very understandable and you don’t even block it in case someone wants to use it legitimately. But I don’t see why so many network admins care about so many other very legal activities. I agree, protecting faculty information and securing the network is far more important than busting some perverted kid looking at perfectly legal XXX content. You have your priorities in check and Skype should not be banned as it only uses bandwidth(most colleges have plenty, mine does). I can only feel that this is a contract issue or some TOS that was written by somebody with bought interests.

PS-You have my vote as net admin at my school and I only do filesharing off my server or from home.

xoriing, did you say you were a butt pirate?