Hydra Proposal

= What is Hydra? =


 * The purpose of this virtual machine(VM) is to host a Direct Connect(DC++) Hub.
 * The VM and the service that will be run on the VM will be called Hydra.
 * Hydra will be administrated and run by students Kwaku Yeboah Antwi with the help of Aaron Cantrell.
 * Hydra will be running the Verlihub DC++ server software and the MYSQL database software.
 * Every piece of software that will be run on Hydra will be free/libre/open source software.
 * The software that Hydra will be running has a very low memory footprint and has need for just minimal space thus Hydra will require no more than 2GB of ram and 10GB of space.
 * Hydra will be run for as long as there is need for its services among the Hampshire community.

= What functionality will Hydra provide and How will it benefit the community? =


 * Hydra will provide a file sharing hub that will be available to only the Hampshire community.
 * It will be used to facilitate filesharing between the members of the Hampshire community.
 * Hydra will make it very easy for students and faculty and staff to share files among themselves.
 * For example, Hydra will make it very easy for faculty to easily share class resources with students.
 * As of now, faculty go through great pains when trying to share digital files with students.
 * Most faculty are unable to share these files due to the huge hassle involved and even those who are able to share these files are unable to reach all of their target audience due to technological problems.
 * With the arrival of Hydra, that process will become very simplified since, all faculty will have to do is, start up their DC++ clients, specify what files to share and those files will then become readily available to the target audience on campus.
 * Hydra will also make it very easy for students and faculty to share material with restricted licenses that forbid sharing outside academic circles since Hydra will only be available to the Hampshire community.
 * Hydra will reduce also the strain on Hampshire's network.
 * With the demise of the last student run filesharing hub(ornia), Hampshire's network traffic has grossly increased due to students using the bittorrent protocol to share files.
 * With the arrival of Hydra, file sharing between students will again, be confined to the Hampshire intranet, thereby greatly reducing the strain on Hampshire's network and IT equipment since all the traffic will be within our local network.