IRC and firewalls (was Re: [vtk-developers] IRC boycott?)

[Charl P. Botha]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 11:32:07PM +0530, Prabhu Ramachandran wrote:
> Alternatively you could get around this if someone runs a irc-www
> gateway using something like this:
> 
>  http://cgiirc.sourceforge.net
> 
> AFAIK, the only trouble with this is that someone who is not behind a
> firewall with a blocked irc port needs to have this running.  If that
> can be arranged it should be possible for someone behind a firewall to
> get to irc.  I think Charl has more experience with this.  Charl, any
> words of advice?

I just tried out this proxy and it seems to work very well.  The advantage
of this software is that one only needs one's browser to take part (and of
course a non-irc-firewalled webserver to run it the proxy itself on) and
that the client machines only need to be able to get traffic out to port 80,
which is of course allowed by even the most paranoid firewall admins.  With
other proprietary chat systems, you're potentially excluding
non-windows-using developers.

I'm sure I'll be able to get permission to run this proxy for VTK chats on
my work server if I can perform sufficient access control, i.e. only allow
connects from the networks/machines of VTK developers.  If you'd like me to
inquire about this, please say so.