Outside Users Keep Network Access

In an attempt to allay students' fears of a "firewall" blocking outside access to Harvard's computer network, representatives of Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) said yesterday the University will not restrict all incoming connections to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) network.

"We will not take a far-reaching network action before we understand the complete effect of that action from tests with students and have a chance to discuss the effects with students," Frank M. Steen, director of HASCS, wrote in an e-mail.

An announcement posted on the HASCS newsgroup message board on Friday by Bill Ouchark, HASCS manager of networking and UNIX systems, had aroused fears among many students that HASCS might restrict all outside access by erecting a firewall to reduce the extremely heavy traffic that the network has been facing in recent weeks.

"The next step in traffic control is that of traffic filtering," Ouchark's statement read. "Our goal is to establish a set of traffic rules to place on the student networks which would allow all activity sourcing from the user of the system, yet at the same time disallow connection attempts from external systems and discourage high-bandwidth serving."

Many students who read this message felt that HASCS was implying that it might need to erect a firewall in order to reduce network traffic.

Such a firewall would allow users on the Harvard network to establish connections with sites on the Internet but would not allow other Internet users to connect to computers on the Harvard network.

This would not stop Harvard students from surfing the Internet, checking their e-mail or using communication services like AOL Instant Messenger, but students home for the holidays would no longer be able to access programs and files on the Harvard network.

Furthermore, this type of firewall would prohibit students from publishing anything to the Internet from their computers.

Steen said these were both reasons why the construction of a complete firewall would not be part of the HASCS plan.

"The reason we even discussed a partial outgoing network restriction was that some students were inadvertently and unknowingly turning their computers into servers and this greatly affected both the performance of their own computers and the network in general," Steen said.

A town-hall style meeting will take place this evening at 5 p.m. in Science Center D to give students an opportunity to better understand the current network problems and to discuss possible solutions.

Many students said they were eager to express their opinions and ideas on how to best handle the situation.

"I'm hoping that today's meeting will let us ask direct questions and hopefully get direct answers, rather than pounce on every shred of policy that gets hinted at in these public announcements," said Russell S. Cox '01.

Several students posted possible alternative solutions to the traffic problem on the HASCS newsgroup website over the weekend.

Last Tuesday, HASCS decided to restrict all outbound traffic on the FAS network to 10 percent of total bandwidth as a temporary relief measure.

Over the past week, HASCS has contacted student groups such as the Harvard Computer Society and the Undergraduate Council to discuss possible longterm strategies for solving the network's traffic woes, and is currently soliciting student volunteers to conduct tests of possible policies.