What's new?

We are blocking all attempts to access computers in the residence halls from the Internet. Computers in the residence halls retain full access to get out to the Internet.

What's affected?

Items that are affected include:

• Multi-player Internet games (not local on-campus multi-user or single-user games).
• Publishing shared files on peer-to-peer networks (but not getting files from them).
• Applications left running on a computer that others outside of BC connect to while the computer is unattended.

What's not affected?

Popular applications such as Web browsing, instant messaging, email, and other user-initiated activities are completely unaffected.

Why?

As you may be aware, the campus network is continually bombarded by unwanted network traffic from a large variety of external sources. Blocking the inbound network traffic was done in order to protect both the BC network and your computer from being the target of attacks. After this block was in place, we blocked 27 million attempts to access computers in residence halls from the Internet during the first two weeks!

What students should do

You can help us by submitting feedback with details of any application you wish to use that you believe has been affected by the port blocking. Use the form at: www.bc.edu/gethelp. We will continue to monitor and evaluate the network traffic situation as it unfolds. Thank you for your understanding and support of the safety of our Boston College community.