[49122] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: How important is IM? was RE: How important is the PSTN
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Grant A. Kirkwood)
Tue Jun 25 15:35:09 2002
From: "Grant A. Kirkwood" <grant@tnarg.org>
Reply-To: grant@tnarg.org
To: "Christopher J. Wolff" <chris@bblabs.com>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 12:40:24 -0700
In-Reply-To: <ALECJLKGJPLDJKMJGGMFIEJJCPAA.chris@bblabs.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Tuesday 25 June 2002 12:16 pm, Christopher J. Wolff wrote:
> Jane,
>
> This brings up a good point about IM. IMHO, IM is a security risk and I
> am establishing a company standard where users behind the firewall are
> prohibited from using IM, IRC, and peer-to-peer file sharing programs.
> My opinion is that these types of programs contribute more to lack of
> productivity than to real problem solving.
99% agreed. I've seen more viruses float in via {insert PtP here) than I'd
care to think about.
> So my question for the group is, do chat programs (IM, IRC, yahoo) serve
> a substantial network support purpose or are they more of a distraction,
> allowing staff to communicate with friends, relatives, drifters,
> interlopers on company time?
We support a number of international clients who don't necessarily have the
best English-speaking skills. In these cases we find ICQ/AIM/IRC/etc... to
be a necessity. Trying to work with a customer to debug kernel compile
errors via telephone from the relative un-comfort of a loud/windy
datacenter in broken English does NOT work.
Grant
--
Grant A. Kirkwood - grant(at)tnarg.org
Fingerprint = D337 48C4 4D00 232D 3444 1D5D 27F6 055A BF0C 4AED
