Best of the ISP-Lists

The Legitimacy of Instant Messaging

If your technical support staff is using instant messaging to collaborate on solving technical problems, is that a good thing or a waste of human resources?

[February 6, 2003]

On the ISP-Tech list in January, PJ asked:

"I am trying to block all the IMs (I.E. MSN, AOL, yahoo, ICQ, etc.) and have found that after blocking the ports listed they use, the program will use port 80. That's sneaky! Does any one know a way to fully block IMs with out totally blocking the domains they point to (hotmail.com, aol.com, yahoo.com, icq.com). Browsing the listed sites above is currently not allowed in our network until we find a way to stop the IMs. Any help is appreciated."

[SP advised] "You might be able to do it if you can monitor the traffic by the application if you have that capability."

DB had several suggestions:

"This is a social problem. Fix it with an AUP. No one really wants to lose a job now, right?

You could filter stuff using Zorp or a similar proxy. Blocking by name for yahoo is cs[1-8].yahoo.com, scs[1-8].yahoo.com.

Of course, you might not mind blocking those domains."

[DP asked] "Are you talking about blocking it for your employees or your network in general?"

[PJ replied] "Employees. Maybe blocking port 80 UDP would help?"

Several respondents recommended clarifying corporate policy.

[AB advised] "Make sure your employees don't need IM before you block them."

[RR added] "What about a company policy that says nobody can use IM? If you've go to resort to blocking ports then I believe there's an underlying problem or solution that you are ignoring."

[GK suggested] "I know of a company that got rid of an 800-page employee rule book andreplaced it with

As an employee are expected to conduct yourself in a professional manner and use your best judgment.

Productivity went up noticeably."

[PJ explained] "I need to find out which of my people are truly qualified and weed out the 'paper certifications' folks. It's sneaky but I like the idea."

Respondents were baffled.

[JS asked] "Am I the only one who finds this ironic?"

[CF agreed] "Yeah, maybe they ought to cut off mail list access too. But then the people who were trying to ask how to filter IM packets would look 'challenged' also."

— End