Is AIM Really a Bandwidth Hog?

Crispen asks: "A mess of schools, especially K-12 schools in the US, have banned instant messaging, claiming that it is a huge bandwidth hog. Is it? If you block ports 4443 (images) and 5190 (file transfers), how much bandwidth does AIM really take?"

Comments

Re:Enormous consumer of mental bandwidth

[n1ywb]

Sure lets block email too! Email costs productivity!

I used IM and EMail regularly throughout the day to communicate with my teachers and fellow students. My productivity would take a big dump without either technology. If I lost both, well fuck I might have to use a telephone! Hey everybody lets ban all forms of communication other than written mail! Wake up.

Using AIM during a lecture is a totally different problem and shouldn't require BANNING it from the lab. IMNSHO it's no different from using a CELL PHONE during a lecture and the teacher should deal with the problem accordingly. And if it's a lab where people are typing anyway and the teacher can't tell that the student is IMing then who cares? Students aren't robots and you can't FORCE them to learn no matter how hard you try. If they can IM in lab and still pass then more power to 'em. If they fail then too damn bad, it's their own damn fault.