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Modem Pool Fair Use PolicySUBJECT: Information Technology Facilitative/Fair Usage Policy SOURCE: Office of the Vice President for Information Technology POLICY NO: IT-11 DATE ISSUED: September 2, 1999 RATIONALE:Taxpayers, students, and other sources of funding supporting technology resources at Indiana University expect that these assets will be used equitably and only in support of the University's missions of research, instruction and learning, and community service. Unrelated and inappropriate use reduces the amount of resource available to satisfy these missions. On occasion, individual users or processes may be identified as using what appears to be, in comparison with other users and processes on the same system or network, an inordinate amount of technology resource. These situations cause sometimes-significant degradation of service to other users. POLICY: Persons whose Indiana University-mission-related activities are consuming an inordinate amount of Indiana University technical resource will be contacted by the appropriate responsible service manager/administrator and adequate alternate arrangements for fulfilling the requirements of the project will be identified (where possible and feasible). Persons whose non-Indiana University-mission-related activities are consuming an inordinate amount of Indiana University technical resource will be contacted by the appropriate responsible service manager/administrator and asked to cease that activity. DEFINITIONS: "An inordinate amount of Indiana University technical resource": a user or process is consuming a resource to a level such that service to other users is degraded, or where the actions of a user could cause degradation if the user is permitted to continue their practice or activity. Network engineers and systems administrators must use experience and knowledge of normal service usage patterns to make good decisions about standard or non-standard usage. PROCEDURE REFERENCE:The service manager or responsible technician will notify the user that they are consuming an unfair share of the resource, reporting to the user an appropriate metric by which they can gauge their use against that of other users. The user will be asked to describe their activity or purpose for the process or use. If there is a University-related activity involved, the manager or administrator should attempt to accommodate that user's needs in a way that does not impact other users. At times, this may not be feasible and it may be necessary for the user to change the way they are operating. If the use is not related to University activities, the user should be asked to stop. These are examples of instances where service managers may choose to establish usage limits. This is not an exhaustive list, and users must be aware of similar restrictions on services that they use: 1) Modem pool -- multiple simultaneous logins. Modem resources are limited, and are very expensive to maintain at levels adequate for all users who need to dial-in and use IU resources. In addition, there are security issues related to allowing multiple logins using the same account. Others may determine the password for a particular account, and subsequently use this account to access IU and Internet resources without the account holder or anyone else suspecting. Unless there is a reason consistent with academics or administration of the University, no single user should be using more then one connection at any given time. 2) Modem pool -- continuous logins/automatic dial-back. Modem resources are limited, and are very expensive to maintain at levels adequate for all users who need to dial- in and use IU resources. Unless there is a reason consistent with academics or administration of the University, no single user should be maintaining a continuous connection to the modem pool, or maintaining a virtually continuous connection with automatic fast dial-back mechanisms. A reasonable average fair limit for a cumulative daily connect time is 4 hours. 3) System CPU -- individual server processes. Multi-user processes executing from individual user accounts can be a significant drain on system resources, especially of the server process is mis-configured or not written well. Unless there is a reason consistent with academics or administration of the University, no user should be running server processes from their personal computer accounts. 4) Electronic mail -- mass mailings. Sending electronic mail to a large number of recipients simultaneously can degrade the email service for all users. Indiana University has a bulk electronic mail policy, which must be reviewed prior to initiating such a mailing -- if a large mailing otherwise satisfies the policy, the mailing should be broken into pieces of 200 recipients with several hours between mailings. 5) Network bandwidth -- campus/Internet network. Individuals and personal computers can consume a large amount of the IU campus' networks. For example, a popular file server on a residence hall computer can consume 15% of the campus network, simply handling traffic to-and-from that computer. Network administrators monitor traffic patterns, and will contact owners of devices that are using an unfair amount of network resource. 6) Account usage -- in instances where computer resource is becoming constrained and where resource augmentation is not feasible or possible, service managers may review account usage and remove and archive accounts for which there has been no activity for a period inconsistent with the normal use patterns for that service. Account holders should be made aware of specific procedures for a particular service, and where possible affected account holders should be informed of the intent to archive their account. RESPONSIBLE ORGANIZATION: Office of the Vice President for Information Technology University Information Technology Policy Office itpo@iu.edu http://www.itpo.iu.edu APPROVED: Michael McRobbie Vice President for Information Technology September 2, 1999
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