In a move that has sparked protest from both students and professors, San Jose State University has become the latest California school to ban Skype from most of its campus. Citing concerns regarding security and consumption of bandwidth, school administrators feel that the service is an unnecessary and potentially illegal waste of resources. The University of California--Santa Barbara and California State University--Dominguez Hills have also recently banned the popular VoIP service.
In a memo seen by Ars Technica, the SJSU Office of Information Technology says that Skype and other applications which use "grid-computing-like" networking capabilities are to be banned, but VoIP applications such as Gizmo or Wengo are still permitted for use. The memo also states that Skype's EULA is far too broad, requiring users to grant Skype general "usage rights" to the SJSU networksomething that end users do not have the right to do, as it is not their network. OIT also says that the changes to the XP firewall "may prove to be an excellent vector for a worm."
Bandwidth hog?
According to Skype's FAQ, normal usage consumes less than 20 kilobytes per second during a call. By that metric, Skype is considerably less "wasteful" than file downloads, Internet gaming, and many other activities enjoyed by students. But according to the Office of Information Technology, the chief problem comes when a Skype client acts as a "supernode" and makes itself available to relay calls made by other users. Having numerous supernodes on a school network increases bandwidth consumption and has a detrimental impact on connectivity, according to the memo. Anecdotal reports from individual Skype users reveal that bandwidth consumption can increase by as much as an entire gigabyte per month for a single Skype client when it acts as a supernode.
Rather than banning the software, some universities and government agencies simply require that users disable supernode functionality to prevent the application from wasting bandwidth. Although Skype does not provide an easy way to disable relaying functionality, it isn't particularly difficult to figure out how to do so. Chicago particle physics laboratory Fermilab provides employees with instructions on how to prevent their systems from becoming supernodes in order to prevent "potential public embarrassment ... regarding inappropriate use of government-funded resources."
Cutting off an educational tool
One of many vocal critics of the school's new policy, university professor Steve Sloan, has used his blog to call for his colleagues to help overturn the ban. Sloan had planned to use Skype in his classroom to facilitate discussion between his students and the authors of a textbook used by the class. Arguing that Skype and VoIP technology is of comparable significance to the Internet in academic value, Sloan asks that administrators consider the long term implications of banning technology with such significant educational potential. To Sloan, Skype "is more than a program, it is a global communications and collaboration platform. It's also a pipe into a flat world where easy communications is a strategic advantage and the loss of which is a disadvantage."
In light of the fierce resistance from students and professors, San Jose State University may have to reconsider its ban. Skype parent company eBay, which is located only ten miles from the school, plans to send representatives to meet with school administrators in order to explain how Skype works and how the school can resolve its concerns without resorting to a ban. If eBay can provide the school with a simple mechanism that can consistently prevent all computers on its local network from becoming supernodes, there is no reason that the ban need be perpetuated. One wonders why the school didn't consider asking the tech company for a solution in the first place, rather than enacting a policy guaranteed to vex students.
San Jose State University has made an important exception to the ban, however. Dormitories and residences are excluded, as are "third party" segments of the network. These locations are exempted because they are self-funding, according to the memo.
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