You know busines is booming when...

...you discover that the lab is completely empty, and the entire lab 
staff are standing around the lab office openly surfing ebay and 
chatting amoungst themselves. Even the project managers.

o_O

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> ...you discover that the lab is completely empty, and the entire lab staff 
> are standing around the lab office openly surfing ebay and chatting 
> amoungst themselves. Even the project managers.

At least they are not surfing monster.co.uk :-)

Send round an email saying that you are having problems with internet 
bandwidth, and people should be reminded not to use the internet for 
personal reasons.  Block ebay and other sites you see people using for 
personal stuff, and when they complain ask them to fill in a form detailing 
the business justification for using that site, signed by their manager :-)

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scott wrote:

> At least they are not surfing monster.co.uk :-)

Actually the jobs section of New Scientist, but hey... ;-)

> Send round an email saying that you are having problems with internet 
> bandwidth, and people should be reminded not to use the internet for 
> personal reasons.

Well, that's true enough.

> Block ebay and other sites you see people using for 
> personal stuff

Oh if only I had the power to do that! >:-D

> and when they complain ask them to fill in a form 
> detailing the business justification for using that site, signed by 
> their manager :-)

Hee... I won't how long it would take for our lab directory to demand 
that I unblock Facebook? (He spends 20% of his day surfing it. The other 
80% is of course spent standing outside smoking... Nobody likes that guy.)

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>> Block ebay and other sites you see people using for personal stuff
>
> Oh if only I had the power to do that! >:-D

Most medium sized and larger companies I've seen have some sort of website 
filtering, mainly to prevent their employees getting illegal material or 
viruses into their company.

As a first step, you could monitor the internet traffic and rank the volume 
by domain name - if facebook.com and ebay.co.uk come out top then I think 
you have a good business case to implement some sort of filter software :-) 
It's only fair for the rest of the employees who are trying to use it for 
business purposes...

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scott wrote:

> Most medium sized and larger companies I've seen have some sort of 
> website filtering, mainly to prevent their employees getting illegal 
> material or viruses into their company.

Agreed.

> As a first step, you could monitor the internet traffic and rank the 
> volume by domain name - if facebook.com and ebay.co.uk come out top then 
> I think you have a good business case to implement some sort of filter 
> software :-) It's only fair for the rest of the employees who are trying 
> to use it for business purposes...

First I'd have to have a way to monitor Internet traffic...

(And secondly, I rather suspect news.povray.org might come out tops, so 
maybe this isn't such a hot idea after all!)

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Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
> 
>> Most medium sized and larger companies I've seen have some sort of 
>> website filtering, mainly to prevent their employees getting illegal 
>> material or viruses into their company.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> As a first step, you could monitor the internet traffic and rank the 
>> volume by domain name - if facebook.com and ebay.co.uk come out top 
>> then I think you have a good business case to implement some sort of 
>> filter software :-) It's only fair for the rest of the employees who 
>> are trying to use it for business purposes...
> 
> First I'd have to have a way to monitor Internet traffic...
> 
> (And secondly, I rather suspect news.povray.org might come out tops, so 
> maybe this isn't such a hot idea after all!)


The best - and worst - about being the only one who takes care of the 
network is that you know when a sniffer or filter is set up - because 
you set it up ;-)



Tom

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>> First I'd have to have a way to monitor Internet traffic...
>>
>> (And secondly, I rather suspect news.povray.org might come out tops, 
>> so maybe this isn't such a hot idea after all!)
> 
> 
> The best - and worst - about being the only one who takes care of the 
> network is that you know when a sniffer or filter is set up - because 
> you set it up ;-)

Hmm... LOL!

Actually, IIRC the last time I tried this (many years ago) the top site 
in terms of traffic was www.knightsofold.com or something wierd like 
that, with all traffic coming from just one machine on the LAN. It was 
16% of our total bandwidth usage. And povray.org wasn't even on the 
chart. (But that was before I became the Mascot...)

Currently it's not possible for me to do any sniffing except for 
broadcast traffic. It's completely possible to reconfigure the network 
switches, but I don't have access to them. I'm only the tea boy, after 
all...

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48d101d4$1@news.povray.org...

> Currently it's not possible for me to do any sniffing except for broadcast 
> traffic. It's completely possible to reconfigure the network switches, but 
> I don't have access to them. I'm only the tea boy, after all...

What about on the internet gateway? Don't you have access to that server?

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>> Currently it's not possible for me to do any sniffing except for 
>> broadcast traffic. It's completely possible to reconfigure the network 
>> switches, but I don't have access to them. I'm only the tea boy, after 
>> all...
> 
> What about on the internet gateway? Don't you have access to that server?

The Internet gateway is a Cisco router. I don't have the password - and 
frankly, if I did I wouldn't know what to do with it.

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Invisible wrote:
>>> Currently it's not possible for me to do any sniffing except for 
>>> broadcast traffic. It's completely possible to reconfigure the 
>>> network switches, but I don't have access to them. I'm only the tea 
>>> boy, after all...
>>
>> What about on the internet gateway? Don't you have access to that server?
> 
> The Internet gateway is a Cisco router. I don't have the password - and 
> frankly, if I did I wouldn't know what to do with it.


How many physical connections from your internal network to your 
internet gateway - the Cisco router?

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