[H-GEN] Multi-thread downloads

[Raymond Smith]

Hi Russell,

[ Still not speaking for the exec. ]

On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 06:22:59PM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-05-31 at 16:27, Raymond Smith wrote:
> > I don't think we have ever had an official position. I guess we
> > have made an assumption that people will learn to be respectful
> > and so there was no need. I'm not really sure what an official
> > position would look like. I don't know how you codify respect
> > for community resources.
> > 
> > What would you expect from such a document?
> 
> In my mind there is a bigger issue at stake here. [ ... ]

I think we are talking at cross purposes. It would seem that
when you spoke of an 'official position' you meant with 
regard to behaviour in response to the rate limiting at meetings.
I had taken you to mean an 'official position' on downloading,
in particular the use of 'accelerators'.

I do not see the point of taking an official position before we
know why UQ has instituted this policy. I will say again: as near
as we can tell this isn't something directed at HUMBUG. It is
just something that has happened.

> Evidently we now hove one group who believe the message has
> been clearly delivered by whoever sent it, and another who
> doesn't believe it is directed at them.  Looking back at this
> thread, I see phrases like Raymond's above: "respect for 
> community resources", or in a post from Greg: "No, it's an 
> abuse", and in a post from Sarah: "stop being a leecher".  
> These are strong words to direct at someone who has chosen 
> to  interpret a poorly delivered message differently to the 
> way they have.

If I have caused offence, I am sorry for that offence. I
make a point of going out of my way not to cause offence 
on this list and so feel the need to clarify.

I was not concerned about the use of download accelerators
at meetings in response to traffic throttling; I am 
concerned about their use at all. 

It seems to me that such things are disrespectful of the 
owners of servers and other users because they could so
easily chew through connections and file handlers on the
server side. These are finite resources that must be shared
amoung all Internet users.

Now I see nothing wrong with using a download manager: namely
a program that takes a list of files to download sequentially.
I would not even say that these accelerators should be forbidden:
many web broswers are multi threaded; downloading a couple 
of files from the same site at the same time seems reasonable.

Up until my visit to the downloader website I had no idea that
people were using resume functionality to use mutliple connections
to download files. Their description evoked an image of a 
leecher firing off downloads for six ISOs with each download 
using sixteen connections each.

Now that isn't what Harry proposed. Maybe it isn't how these
things are ever used. Maybe people download one file at a time
with a modest number of connections (say four). I'd certainly
not complain if that was the mode of operation and I were a
server owner.

But how will you know to use the tool responsibly if you don't 
have respect for the service provider? I don't want to ban
software, I just want people to act with respect.

I guess it is also possible that I am just an old fogey whose
mores are out of date. :-)

> I happen to agree the prudential thing to do would be to limit
> Humbug's bandwidth until we find out more, and so I agree
> with the course of action the authors of those barbs want us
> to take.  But people, you are attacking the wrong issue!

None of my comments were or are being made to enforce some sort
of official policy. When I am doing that I will be quite clear
that I am speaking for the club.
 
Cheers,

Raymond
-- 
raymond at humbug.org.au