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

[Sebastien BARRE]

At 4/23/2002 03:45 PM, Charl P. Botha wrote:

>I just tried out this proxy and it seems to work very well.

It seems a bit slow, but I guess it depends on your location.

>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.

I understand admin being paranoid about IRC. It always has been a place 
full of script-kiddies or 12 years-old hackers/yahoos of some sorts, making 
IRC servers "famous" for being attacked more than usual.

>With other proprietary chat systems, you're potentially excluding
>non-windows-using developers.

I doubt this chat will occur more than once every 2 weeks... How many vtk 
developers have *no* Windows box in their lab/company ? As far as we are 
concerned here (at Kitware), this won't be an issue.

>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.

Great. go ahead Charl !


--
Sebastien Barre