My company, citing the huge use of bandwidth, has firewalled all chat programs.
Can anyone tell me how, if at all, I can get around this?
If not, can anyone give me real data proving that these things do in fact take up lots of bandwidth or don’t?
Thanks
I really doubt that they do take up much bandwidth, unless you are doing audio and video messaging or transfering loads of big files. I think bosses are more concerned about the amount of time employees might be spending on chatting instead of working. I think you might try talking to your boss about how you use your instant messaging programs for work, and only for work. Certainly the programs were very useful for me at my previous job when I wanted to communicate with the secretaries in our Taizhong head office, and they must have saved my boss a fair amount in phone bills (ching! boss’s eyes light up in comprehension!)
On a related topic, I would like to know how to enable instant messenger file transfer where it is blocked.
Ax knows a lot about instant messenger programs. Calling Ax, come in Ax, do you read me? Over!
Meanwhile, have a look at HTTP-Tunnel, and if you are doing your messaging within the LAN, consider Corporate Messenger.
if the firewall is set up correctly there is no way to pass with a messenger program.
do a port scan to find out which ports are open on the firewall, if you find an appropriate one try to set your messenger program to that port
Messenger uses a large number of different ports. If it’s usual ones are blocked, it moves around until it finds an open one and listens on that port. It’s designed to go through corporate firewalls.
Of course, a good firewall can block it anyways. Back when I was a boss, I blocked it.
That said, try this.
One reason I am given is that ICQ and MSN spreads viruses.
Any links to debunk this?
depends on your os
you can get messenger clients for mac or linux as well
HTTP tunneling is the way to go to get around blocked ports, because the IMs are bundled up and sent out through the firewall as http data.
I had limited success with Your Freedom, which is free at the moment:
your-freedom.net/index.pl/en/home.html
You might want give Hopster a try, but only the demo service is free:
Did you get around the firewall yet?
Ax told me about this beta thing from Mircorsoft, I tried it and it’s pretty cool. I don’t see how it would get block by a firewall since it’s html.
webmessenger.msn.com/
He also said something about setting up a proxy, but I won’t go figuring that one out if you’ve already found another solution.
Equivalents of MSN Web Messenger for other messengers:
AIM (AOL): aim.com/get_aim/express/aim_expr.adp
ICQ: go.icq.com/
Odigo: odigo.org/features/express.html
I can’t find the Yahoo one. Maybe it’s been discontinued…
Here’s a link for a web based msn client.
This way you can login via your browser and not have to worry about the firewall as all you need is a javascript enabled browser(like internet explorer)