h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OOOOOoooo I just BET you're out there talkin' to Spartus on AIM.

*stumps around*

STUPID WORK FIREWALL! I WANNA PLAY TOO!

Well if it's any consolation... I wasn't.

That's cause Spartus is hardly ever on AIM

Yeah, but...

Oh, I'm not, am I? Hmm.

Krissy, m'dear, I may have a shifty way for you to get around that there firewall. I'll mail you when I'm under the influence of fewer beers.

Hey Spartus, let me know how to climb a firewall without any nasty burning side effects too!

The only way I know to get round our FW for chatting purposes is to use Yahoo Instant Messanger (from: http://im.yahoo.com ) but I hear that it sucks so I haven't bothered to download it.

I don't mean to sound skeptical, but our firewalls are strong in the ways of the force. I can't use Yahoo messanger or nothin'.

Spartus, let's give it a shot and see if we can destroy this evil beastie!! HA HA!

And since KM is a sweet pea and was making a quiz, I officially forgive and squidge her.

*SQUIDGE*

hah

*joins the beating firewall club*

One thing that might work is to tell AIM to use port 80. Except I know I told that to someone else before, and I don't think it worked. It depends upon how the firewall is set up. The reason for 80 is because that's what WWW generally uses, and most firewalls are set to allow that sort of outgoing traffic. Network admins everywhere might hate me if this works, but so what?

Nice one Greg!

Now, what I don't understand is why, if their AIM server thingy is listening on port 80, they don't set that as the default port in the AIM client.

Did it work? It used to apparently fall back to using port 80 if the default port(s) didn't work, but I think enough admins screamed at them to stop that practice. Not sure.

By the way, if this *does* work for some, it *won't* for others most likely. If/when it works, it will be basically because of lazy network administration. It's certainly possible to deny AIM's type of traffic completely.

I think I've tried this before and it doesn't work for me

The other solution that I did hear about was to check your browser's default proxy settings and set AIM for those.

*hopes it works*

That's true. I was thinking about that when I was looking at the prefs panel earlier and noticed a place to fill in proxy settings...

I think the fact that the '80' solution worked for me is more down to ingnornace rather than laziness.

Unfortunately I'm starting a new job in a few days time (still with the same company, so the firewall beater will still work) and it may be more difficult to find the necessary time and privacy for AIMing. Until then (and hopefully after then as well) I'm on as Jonny95131.