Advise Needed - Corporate LAN

I administer a network at a small college with some overseas students.
A recent student is particually homesick and is requesting to be able
to make voice calls using messenger (which is currently blocked by our
filewall)

1. Any comments on security implications, I understand the port is
dynamically chosen and so ports 5004-65535 would have to be opened.?

2. Any idea how much bandwith (mb/minute) a typical overseas pc to pc
voice call would be?

Many thanks

Greetings,

1. Yes -- and the IP has to be a public IP [if it's a private IP, then the NAT (assuming
that's what you're using) will need to support Universal Plug and Play, which a college
network won't].

2. Messenger actually uses different amounts of bandwidth depending on what bandwidth is
available. The highest being 64Kbps (Kilobits, not bytes) -- which is around 8KB/sec. If
you're interested to see what codecs are available, see he
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...nrtcclient.asp

An issue I see is many overseas providers use NAT (private IPs) to connect their customers,
so Messenger voice may or may not even work (see answer 1 for a brief explanation why).
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Windows MVP, Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com


"BD" wrote in message
om...
I administer a network at a small college with some overseas students.
A recent student is particually homesick and is requesting to be able
to make voice calls using messenger (which is currently blocked by our
filewall)

1. Any comments on security implications, I understand the port is
dynamically chosen and so ports 5004-65535 would have to be opened.?

2. Any idea how much bandwith (mb/minute) a typical overseas pc to pc
voice call would be?

Many thanks