COMMENT The Institute of Directors, London, UK
Like many parents of 18-year-olds living in the UK, I have spent the last few months visiting universities. I'm happy to report that at last all choices have been made, applications submitted and examinations started. Having had children at school, college and university for 27 years I am now on the home straight and I can almost see the glint on my long service medal!
The visits have been interesting - just to see what facilities universities offer, the course content, teaching styles and placement opportunities. And I have to say that I have been favourably impressed on most counts. But the single most common downside has been internet access tainted by the controlling and constraining hand of an anonymous and invisible IT department.
My favourite visit, at a university I couldn't possibly mention, started well with an expose that included a rundown of the campus LAN and Wi-Fi connectivity. I started to scan the site as we toured building to building. Wi-Fi was everywhere - brilliant!
So I thought I'd give it a go and clear my emails and make a few calls. During an attempt from the coffee shop, I saw three visible nodes available at different signal strengths. I selected the strongest and tried to log on. Whoops, it was WEP protected! Why? Hmm... a puzzle and not a good start. Looking around the shop I spotted a group of academics and students with laptops working in small groups. This I thought would offer a route to a solution - wrong!
I approached each group to see if I could get a WEP key but it turned out that none of them were online, nor had they ever been able to get online. Each group had a moan about the Information Support Services (ISS) group and how they had made it all impossible. But I was assured that if I got an official account then I would be able to get online using the wired LAN.
Around lunchtime I approached the ISS empire to be confronted by a very long questionnaire. They wanted to know who I was, which department I was with, what I was going to do on the LAN, what kind of machine I had (Macs are not supported of course - but then again when did a Mac ever need support?). The questions went on and on. It all culminated in a lot of gum sucking by them and the decision that I needed the head of the department's signature. For a one-day visit - can you imagine?
Well I tried and tried but all my efforts came to nothing. I gradually concluded the ISS were really a Gestapo unit (the 'SS' in their name referred to those familiar lightning slashes, I decided). They policed internet access and information but took no heed of customer needs, and had no concept of service.
Needless to say I found a way around the SS control and gained access, only to find that SMTP had been switched off and whilst I could download my POP3 email, it would mean building a tunnel to be able to send. By this time I didn't have the energy, inclination or space in the itinerary!
Later in the day I got with a bunch of students who delighted in telling me how they confounded the ISS by circumventing their efforts to constrain their activities. But not one of us could figure out why and for what purpose the ISS where stopping students, staff and visitors from freely accessing the internet.
If anyone out there can furnish me with an explanation - especially in the face of the near universal connectivity freedom in the US - I would love to hear about the rationale for doing so.
And now, as promised, I would like to step aside and allow my fiancée Jane to give her perspective on my jet-setting lifestyle, as silicon.com reader Antony Norris requested I do in response to a recent blog on our accelerating society.
Antony,
Thank you for the suggestion that I give my perspective. You make an interesting point and whilst I agree with you that technology has undoubtedly increased the pace of life, my view would be that if work, rest and play can be blurred together in a manner that's enjoyable and satisfying... surely that adds to quality of life? Let me explain.
I could never be described as a technologist or IT specialist, indeed I've never even opened the back of a PC but, as a local government officer I am a constant IT user both at work and at home. However, since meeting Peter I have been amazed at the power of technology to help us build and maintain a really strong relationship across a country or indeed across continents and in a timescale that would simply not have been possible with more conventional communication methods.
Peter and I live at opposite ends of the UK and operate in entirely different worlds; Peter in the globe-trotting, hard edge of the private sector where the economy or business case drives everything and me at the heart of the public sector in the West Country. The chances of our meeting were miniscule, let alone the opportunity to build a sustainable relationship. To this end I owe much to technology.
With Peter's lifestyle, a trip to the US has become just another day at the office but technology makes it bearable. Peter always lets all immediate family know by email or text when he's taking off and again when he's landed or arrived safely at his hotel. These small considerations are very reassuring and allow me to stop worrying and fully concentrate on the demands of my own job. I often think of the anguish that must have been experienced by families during long absences caused by business trips or tours of duty during war times with no frequent or reliable means of communication.
VoIP has been a watershed, Skyping for 40 minutes or so whilst we are both working, either across the UK or Atlantic. The quality of VoIP calls makes for more personal communication than the telephone - it's as if we are in the same room. I view it as the high-tech equivalent to talking over the day's events whilst preparing dinner! Prior to VoIP, the expense of transatlantic phone calls tended to make them much less satisfying.
Whilst I am immensely excited by the opportunities of future technologies, I know that a few years ago when all these mechanisms either did not exist or were so clumsy as to be ineffectual, building and maintaining a long distance relationship would have been incredibly difficult and expensive. Having just said that, I also know that it's possible to get too hooked up by it all!
Jane
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There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
What is he talking about - 'near universal connectivity freedom in the US'? What does that mean? So I can go anywhere in the states and get internet access for free?
2. anonymous
A large scondary modern school my children attend in South Northants also has its ITSS. They have removed floppy and CD-Rom drives to 'prevent virus infection'. Pupils transfer homework, etc. using USB memory keyfobs....
3. David Howe
Not anywhere but most developed areas have many free access points. Most are concentrated in the more densely populated areas...where I live, (Cincinnati) the "official" population is around 300K...there are 50 or more wireless access points of which about 15% are free.
4. Rich A.
Such an ego centric attitude to think that Internet connectivity is an unlimited naturally occurring resource and that it is your God given right to have. Internet connectivity is an expensive piece of a network infrastructure. That network infrastructure is owned, operated and maintained buy some organization at a cost. And when that organization tries to protect its investment so that the resource is used for the business purpose it was purchased for you equate them with Hitler’s SS what a joke!!! Go home drink your own coffee and pay for your own Internet connection.
5. Christopher
My school has a wireles network but only the IT technicans can use it. A lot of students have their own laptops but cannot use the internet. I do not know what the ISS are scared of.
6. Simon
Sorry Peter, I agree with much of what you write, but you are way off base with this one.
Yes, the ISS (or whoever could be more helpful), but to suggest that the network should be open, and even that it should allow outgoing SMTP is just plain tosh - something I would not expect of you. I think we can be fairly confident that if this establishment had an open network policy, and was at some point found to have been abused (perhaps by a spammer, perhaps by an online extortionist) then you would be amongst the crown baying for blood from the imbeciles that allowed such an open network. The early years of the Internet when security protocols and firewalls were not needed is long gone - there's just too many dishonest people out there today.
My local LUG is held in a University facility, and they recently replaced the firewall - now IPSec VPNs aren't allowed. The reason given was to control spam - excuse me, just how does allowing an outgoing VPN connection allow spam ? Like you I think they are OTT, but I can see why they are doing it, even if they are being too conservative - being a network admin also helps me see the view from the other side of the counter !
7. Adrian Lee
Simple answers. Viruses for starters. In walks Jo Bloggs with his nice shiny wireless laptop, opens it up, connects to unsecured wireless lan, and oops, spreads the virus/malware he's managed to pick up round the network.
In short, users either do stupid things, or don't have a clue about protecting their own machines properly.
We have some home based staff which we gave laptops and ADSL connections. One asked if he could use his home computer on the work provided connection. I said go ahead, as long as it wasn't interferring with his work, why not use it out of hours.
Because he had no anti-virus, no protections what so ever, no windows updates, he managed to get his internet connection disabled by the ISP because his home computer had a virus and was acting as a zombie machine sending out spam emails.
Guess what, now I insist that if any of them want to use their own machines on the work provided connection, they have to have up-to-date Windows (none of them are going to have Mac's) and decent, regularly updated anti-virus.
I've got enough to deal with without having to babysit staff's home machines screwing around with work resources.
8. anonymous
I guess you also want free Internet access from your local bank when you pass by one of their branches. The best practise in I.T. has always been give no permission and only open up access as it is needed and only to the level required.
9. Ronald McDonald
Peter Cochrane has over-stepped the mark this time. Clearly had he been an important figure in our society his inept references to the SS would have met with a public demand for an apology. Thoughtless, and deliberately superficial.
10. anonymous
I have never read such an emotive piece of trash in my enire professional life. Universities in the UK ultimately get their connection from the Joint Academic Network (JANET). Section 9.6 of their AUP states that every conection and use of their network must be authorised.
11. Andy Laws
Nice one Peter, a free unrestricted access policy. I like it!
Why you may ask?
Because I am an IT contractor and the more open the systems, the more oppertunities for corrupted systems that I will be called in for... :0)
Again well done Peter, I like anything that makes more work for me and thus secure a/. my future and b/. higher rates and of course the ability to make sharpe intakes of breath sounds when adressing the clients of corrupted systems. :o)
12. anonymous
I agree totally with Peter's analysis. This SS security vs IT user conflict has been the norm for decades, since the white lab coats guarded their room sized compters from users. Now it become a ubiquitus cultural phenomena or exerience, and we are taking sides.
With each appearance of new media, starting from sneaker-nets, Zip Disks, then CD-Rom's, now USB sticks and Wireless Internet data traffic, all are seen as a threat to SS security teams.
The conflict occurs between the bureaucrats, who's job is to lock down and protect the system to serve the empire, vs the alliance of rebel students and intellectuals, who use the force of expanding knowledge, and require open information systems to get our job done in the name of academic freedom. To us, security restrictions are just one of the technical challenge to overcome in order to restore balance.
13. Douglas Jackson
Peter,
In the early days of the internet, Universities alliwed connectivity in an open, accessible manner (if you worked for, or studied with them). Here in Australia, that access was abused and it was all too common to see ISP type access being provided through a dial in modem on somebody's PC.
Essentially, the security based attitutes exist for two reasons; people want Internet access for free - The University pays for it, and should not be giving it away to random individuals walking through the campus for free. And secondly, while your intentions toward their network are pure, others attitudes are not. If anything, the IT staff should be houled over the coals for even allowing you POP3 access.
In our pure IT nirvana, access would be allowed, and everybody would do the right thing, unfotunanely, this is always damaged by the few.
14. Peter M.
It's one thing to suggest that he might have been wasting precious, and costly, resources, but if there are faculty and stundents in the cafe saying they find it impossible to use the wireless service, there's something wrong.
While some safeguards are needed within education to prevent flagrant abuse the fact that the head of department was needed to sign this goes some way towards making it 'awkward' to use. Surely they could handle having a 'one day' access and charge a nominal five pounds ($10) for the privilege (it would go towards the admin of setting up, and just talking to the user, compared with what actually happened).
They would only need a business card to know this wasn't going to be someone swapping MP3s or porn - just wanted to check e-mail (and for that I'd suggest getting an account from runbox.com or clara.net which allow SMTP on ports other than 25, or fastmail.fm which allows use of ports 80, 21 and 443).
I know that international traffic to/from UK universities is a finite (and costly) problem, but knowing that this is a place of education leaves me thinking 'if the students have over-complex regulation / restriction when they are there, how will it help them in their working life, to make best use of services ?'
(Yes - I worked 11 years in an IT support position in a UK university, and yes, some restrictions were needed, but flexibility to allow such access would, I feel sure, have been put in place there by now!)