Blocking limewire, skype, kazaa and other such programs

armatage · 14 Aug 2007 at 12:47

We are looking into the process of blocking programs like msn, skype, limewire and kazaa at work.
We can block the website addresses and even block the default port numbers the programs use but a savvy user could change the port number they use.
We are using 3com switched and they can be used to block certain types of traffic but what types of traffic do the different programs use?

Thanks

Sone · 14 Aug 2007 at 13:06

most of these are pretty resilant to simple acl's, we run a clarkeconnect box and it seems to do a good job of stopping them.

HomerJ · 14 Aug 2007 at 13:27

You should also look at locking down the PC's so that the software cannot be installed to start with.

hybrid · 14 Aug 2007 at 20:56

Do you have any sort of budget for this?

We looked into a solution a couple of year ago and ended up leasing out a transparent proxy style box which sits between your network and the router. It uses deep packet inspection and filters out 99% of the unwanted traffic.

It proved a massive success and i believe we are going to purchase another one very soon.

hybrid · 14 Aug 2007 at 21:08

Here's the traffic from one uni with the bit of kit installed. As you can see they have a fair bit of bandwidth to play with... 622mbit pipe infact. They actually cap p2p, skype and some other prots to 20mbit. Madness i know...