Honestly if your company/NOC/whatever is going to use something like this to communicate, I would recommend running your own server, I've worked on financial institutions networks that actually used AIM for communications (ie, JoeBob: Can you change the PIN # on account XYZ to 1234 MarySue: Sure), and used a hotmail address for their ACH! (Automatic Checking withdrawl/deposit) it's insanely irresponsible to use a third party messaging service for anything that your customers information could pass through. FYI, there are ICQ servers you can run locally, but not for AIM or MSN, I would suggest an IRC server. Matthew S. Hallacy (if you're still in doubt, feel free to go read AOL and MSN's ToS for their messaging services) On 8 May 2001, Sean Donelan wrote:
A question (and a test to see if I'm still subscribed)
The various instant messenging services, such as AIM, ICQ, Microsoft, Yahoo, other Messenger uses a central server to manage "presence".
No central server appears to mean no instant messages, am I correct?
What does this have to do with NANOG, apparently it is becoming more common for backbone NOC folks to communicate with their friends in other NOCs via one of these instant chat programs. I didn't realize how common it was until I was informed about it last month when AOL/AIM had difficulties. This month Yahoo Messenger had power difficulties, which disrupted their central servers.
If folks are using this these services for real-time communications, should we be trying to improve their reliability? Or is this just a "feature" of how presence services work.