No Gambling U!

April 9, 2004 1:54 PM

My university recently configured the campus network to block the use of online gambling sites such as partypoker.com and pokerroom.com. In an article in the campus paper, the manager of university network services claimed they recently discovered that a large amount of "unclassified traffic" was clogging the server, and so the network was reconfigured to block this traffic, and this had the "unintended consequence" of blocking online gambling. In other words, this was done to manage bandwidth.

I'm pretty sure this is BS. I'd like to call them on it. More inside.

How can I find out more information about the traffic that online gambling sites would produce? I'd like to find out what criterion is being used to block the traffic, and how credible the university's claim that this is a "side effect" is. I'm guessing these gambling sites are javascript, java, or flash based. How can I find out how much traffic these sites would produce? How can I find out what port the game traffic travels on? I'd basically like to demonstrate that the university is blocking this specific traffic intentionally. I'd like to find similar online activities that are not blocked. How can I do this?

The university, like most universities, uses the Packetter system to manage network traffic. Its apparently a pretty smart system. What criterion is the university probably using to block this traffic?

posted by gsteff to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

I don't think they capped those ports on a whim. Those online gambling programs are malicious and prey upon the internet.
posted by Keyser Soze at 3:19 PM on April 9, 2004

Those online gambling programs are malicious and prey upon the internet

You what?

I'm guessing that the port used by gambling sites would vary depending on whether it's just a website or an actual piece of software that's being downloaded (from the look of those sites, it's a download). The ports used there could be anything.

Are they blocking use of the software, or just access to the websites that are distributing it? If this is related to use of the software, I can see how it could have got blocked as a side-effect of blocking "a large amount of unclassified traffic" (which probably means p2p programs) -- presumably they just blocked everything that they didn't recognise as 'legitimate' traffic. If access via a browser to the actual websites is being blocked, though, I see little excuse.
posted by reklaw at 3:30 PM on April 9, 2004

Response by poster: They're blocking the use of the software; apparently, you can still access the sites, and even begin a game, but then it will cut out on you. The more that I think about it, they probably switched from an opt-out to an opt-in restriction system; whereas they used to allow all ports (or some criterion more sophisticated than simple ports) except a few problem ones (kazaa, for example), they now block all ports except for a few valid ones (80, for example). I think that's probably the most reasonable way to interpret the "unclassified traffic" remark.

That seems less malicious to me, but "communication is disabled by default" still strikes me as an odd university policy. Regardless, is there some software out there that would allow me to measure the bandwidth used while doing online gambling, and track the port on which the traffic is flowing?
posted by gsteff at 3:46 PM on April 9, 2004

Ethereal will capture everything, but you'll have to sort through a bunch of data. There's filters and such to make it easier.
posted by geoff. at 3:51 PM on April 9, 2004

There's a long history of online casinos using some pretty malicious software, but usually as a way of infecting people that get onto their sites, to keep them coming back and serving ads to them, etc.

Even if this is a legit gambling site, I don't think it's the best use of university resources (esp. if it's a public university), so I don't think you'll have much luck fighting for the right to gamble on school property.
posted by mathowie at 3:52 PM on April 9, 2004

Partypoker.com is about as legit as online gambling comes. I've known several people who played there, including myself for a while (I won $5!). Their application does not install any spyware.

But yeah, it'd be a pretty hard sell to convince them to let you use it. Why not sign up for a dial up account with someone like netzero? Hell, if you're throwing away money on gambling, what's another $13 a month?
posted by malphigian at 4:51 PM on April 9, 2004

On a different tack, why is the university obligated to ensure that every internet "service" is available to you?
posted by plinth at 5:02 PM on April 9, 2004

As has been mentioned, on-line gambling sites have a bad history of screwing with the very people they are trying to attract and I would not blame any network administrator for blocking them. Given that this is a university network, owned by the university and provided to the students primarily for academic research, why would you need to access on-line gambling anyway (unless, of course, you were studying something related to on-line gambling)? The university owns the network and has every right to limit access through it.

If what you are wanting to do is expose the fact that they (you assume) are lying to avoid coming out and saying that they are deliberately blocking access to gambling sites, surely you have more important ways to spend your time?
posted by dg at 5:54 PM on April 9, 2004

Response by poster: If what you are wanting to do is expose the fact that they (you assume) are lying to avoid coming out and saying that they are deliberately blocking access to gambling sites, surely you have more important ways to spend your time?

Somewhat true. My concern is that they've also blocked x-box multiplayer networking (this happened separately, and they've admitted its intentional) and have threatened students with expulsion based on logs of their internet usage (the specific case I'm most familiar with involved a student who was researching ways to make fake IDs). I'm habitually paranoid, but I'm worried about the pattern.

Ultimately, I'm not trying to unfairly villify anyone; I'm just trying to do research for an editorial.
posted by gsteff at 6:33 PM on April 9, 2004

Response by poster: Not that those two goals are necessarily mutually exclusive. But I'm really not trying to demonize.
posted by gsteff at 6:36 PM on April 9, 2004

xbox gaming ports would seem to be very specific and harmless in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps you have an IT staff that would rather stamp out any flare-up in traffic than do anything to maintain or improve the network.

the specific case I'm most familiar with involved a student who was researching ways to make fake IDs

That'd just use the standard port 80 to research online if they were using the web to do it, so I don't see how they could ever stop malicious use of internet resources without penalizing everyone with legitimate uses.

Closing down random ports because some kid looked up fake id info on the web would be a very bad line of reasoning worthy of mockery in an editorial.
posted by mathowie at 1:18 AM on April 10, 2004

Well, if it is for an editorial, there is no reason you should not call them on it and at least demand that they be honest about their reasons for shutting off access - if the reasons are genuine, they should have no problem defending their decisions. It seems that, in this case, perhaps they are aware that their decisions are not going to go over well with the students. While they have the right to make these decisions, that does not mean that they should make them. It sounds like a case of a lazy network admin who finds it easier to block everything rather than put in the work to set up proper filtering. Good luck with your research and I wish I could be more helpful.
posted by dg at 3:22 AM on April 10, 2004