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I guess it's a matter of opinion. If a university had some prime real estate, they could sell it to the highest bidder so that they could build a shopping mall,

I guess it's a matter of opinion. If a university had some prime real estate, they could sell it to the highest bidder so that they could build a shopping mall, or they could donate it to a non-profit that would improve society in some way, thereby fulfilling their mission, to improve society. Or they could just cash out and getting more money could arguably improve society in a less tangible, less measurable way. Universities are uniquely positioned to not be constrained by market forces. Part of the reason that universities get privileged access to things, is because they are seen as working in the public interest. Government and business and wealthy donors throw money at universities, because they want to see innovation and public good come from it. Maybe that's idealistic of me, and universities are just a kind of business, and only that. MIT already gives the public free hosting, with an externally routable, unfirewalled ip4 or ip6 address, to anyone who comes on campus. I don't think any other universities in the world do that. And MIT does this at great expense. (this is how Aaron Schwarz was able to download so much of JSTOR) It makes no financial sense for MIT to be doing this. Perhaps they should lock down their network as much as possible, and probably outsource it's management.

ShirleyMarquez 10y ago
That hasn't been completely true for a few years. If you just walk onto campus with a wireless device and use the public network (the one that doesn't require authentication) you get a 10.x.x.x address behind a NAT and it has some firewall restrictions. (They're pretty light; it's mostly to keep out some network attacks.) I think you do still get a public address if you plug into an Ethernet port, and you may get one if you use the MIT SECURE wireless network. MIT's network policies are not purely about what makes financial sense. The Institute was one of the birthplaces of the internet, and they see the ongoing development of it as one of their core missions. MIT has a close relationship with W3C, which is located a stone's throw away. Their network is multi-homed to the max; I think they peer with ALL the backbone providers that operate in the US. The school has ludicrous amounts of internet bandwidth; I think it's now measured in terabits per second. After all, they have to be able to cope with thousands of students watching Netflix along with all the research! And just in case there is a REAL internet collapse... they have an emergency info site at mit.NET that is hosted far away from the campus. That would let them get some information out even if Cambridge were wiped off the map and all the name servers for .edu were to fail.

ShirleyMarquez 10y ago

That hasn't been completely true for a few years. If you just walk onto campus with a wireless device and use the public network (the one that doesn't require authentication) you get a 10.x.x.x address behind a NAT and it has some firewall restrictions. (They're pretty light; it's mostly to keep out some network attacks.) I think you do still get a public address if you plug into an Ethernet port, and you may get one if you use the MIT SECURE wireless network. MIT's network policies are not purely about what makes financial sense. The Institute was one of the birthplaces of the internet, and they see the ongoing development of it as one of their core missions. MIT has a close relationship with W3C, which is located a stone's throw away. Their network is multi-homed to the max; I think they peer with ALL the backbone providers that operate in the US. The school has ludicrous amounts of internet bandwidth; I think it's now measured in terabits per second. After all, they have to be able to cope with thousands of students watching Netflix along with all the research! And just in case there is a REAL internet collapse... they have an emergency info site at mit.NET that is hosted far away from the campus. That would let them get some information out even if Cambridge were wiped off the map and all the name servers for .edu were to fail.