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Blocking Chat programs

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by phamilton

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I would like to block chat programs such as AOL, Yahoo and Msn. What ports need to be filtered on the router. I have a LinkSys router that allows me to filter out specific ports and need the port numbers.

8 replies

by mike o

That would be my first line, too. But if you find people are finding ways around/through the firewall, depending on your environment you might want to look into a security program like Fortres101 (www.fortres.com). You can set up security for users or groups of users and part of it includes blocking specific programs. I use it at the high school I work for and simply block AIM.exe and so forth. Students simply can't run the program.

by phamilton

The LinkSys Router is not providing DHCP but an NT Server machine. The LinkSys only provides our connection to our ISP. Would this cause the port filtering to not work. I have tried your suggestions but had no sucess. Should the machine be restarted after setting the filters, maybe the router??

by zen37

Most of these application will transfer over to port 80 (http) if their initial port is blocked. Your best bet is to deny any traffic to the IP address of the servers.

I know this is alot of work, but aside from barring the application on your workstations, it's the only other way i found to block those darn things.

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