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

Schools I've had to deal with...

[The Fink]

... have generally had a single- or dual-channel ISDN to share between up to 100 computers. (This is in rural areas of Queensland, Australia - yes, they really do have less available bandwidth than your average cable user, and they pay upward of 40c per megabyte for it...).

There's two main reasons we've taken to blocking any form of IM, or in fact anything that isn't HTTP/FTP, to student desktops. First, of course, is the somewhat limited bandwidth, although this was the least of our reasons. Secondly, and far more importantly, is the element of control: with a transparent proxy through which all HTTP and FTP traffic is routed, we can (a) cut down the amount of input bandwidth needed, and (b) implement a certain amount of filtering (well known porn sites, ads, etc).

Not having IM installed on each desktop also means that there's not configuration problems. Realistically schools have to support one environment, and IM systems, with the number that there are, complicate this no end (imagine the arguments if AIM is the only one supported by a school, but a large percentage of kids use MSN...).

Realistically, if kids want to use IM, they're welcome to do so at home on their own (usually dialup) time. Likewise with any other non-HTTP access. I personally don't see it at that disabling; if kids want to IM each other, they can go back to "pass-it-on" notes. :-)

Re:Port 5190

[jeaton]

Nonsense. You can change the port to almost whatever port you want. login.oscar.aol.com listens on 1600 different ports, all with the same service. Try one, like say, port 80. Watch your network with tcpdump. You won't see anything on port 5190, and AIM will work just fine.

Re:Not Bandwidth - Tracking and Filtering

[skaffen42]

The bandwidth use is negligible .. especially in these days of cheap bandwidth for education (we have a full DS3 45Mbps for a 7500 student district).

Holy crap! So what you are actually saying here is that starting a school is the solution to all my broadband problems?

:)

This is too bad.

[Deanasc]

I don't think I could have graduated without AIM to shuttle files back and forth from home to school. Mind you this was from college to my apartment but still I think it's a valid point. AIM was on almost all the computers in the labs and study areas. It was easy to move large files back and forth. AIM also has the ability to limit who gets acces to my home machine. I could easily ensure no one but me could get or give files.

Now before you go on about emailing my files, my college had the myopic foresight to limit email to 5 megs per attachment. My senior thesis was over 19 megs and my thesis advisor couldn't figure out how to open it after I split the files into email sized pieces. Turns out he didn't have winzip but that's another story. Make a long story short, his computer didn't have AIM and I had to turn a hard copy in late.

Once AIM caught on we had files going in and out of the department all the time. Students began collaborating on AIM. This was a commuter college and students HATE collaborating. AIM takes some of the sting out of having to drive in at the one awkward time when everyone can meet.

I can understand schools wanting to control net access but there are better ways to go about doing it. How many naughty files slip through the filters anyway. Blocking AIM isn't going to stop a determined kid but it will chill an effective means of communication between students and the school.

At the rate some schools are going all those computers will turn into nothing more then a complicated Cable TV system attached to a word processor.