Local software development firm Technology Concepts has developed a tool to help businesses fight back against peer-to-peer (P2P) applications that "steal" expensive network bandwidth and create serious security risks.
Wayne de Nobrega, MD of Technology Concepts, says KaZaA P2P traffic has grown significantly over the last two years, increasing the risk to enterprise networks. "These risks include bandwidth wastage, security vulnerabilities and even potential legal prosecution as many of the files that are swapped are copyright-protected."
De Nobrega says P2P traffic has grown to such an extent that it is starting to dominate and cripple the Internet. "On a 128K Internet connection, a typical music CD will take about 50 minutes to download and a typical video will take 16 hours. This is probably one of the main reasons that Telkom instituted a monthly download limit for users who have ADSL lines to their homes," he says.
He adds that P2P traffic is becoming increasingly difficult to track, with applications like KaZaA having been engineered to use ports assigned to valid applications such as browsing. This enables P2P services to pass through most firewalls, raising the risk of a security breach.
De Nobrega says Technology Concepts` new KaZaA Blocker allows network administrators to prevent KaZaA-related traffic from either entering or leaving the network. "The TC KaZaA Blocker alerts the network administrator of the username and the IP address of anyone using KaZaA. This allows administrators not only to block KaZaA traffic, but also to identify culprits and take necessary action."
Although the product will work in any size organisation, De Nobrega says Technology Concepts will target small to medium-sized companies with a permanent Internet connection, as the large companies should already have other more expensive solutions in place to combat P2P applications.
TC KaZaA Blocker is an add-on module for TC Bandwidth Manager, which allows network administrators to allocate and provision bandwidth to give priority to important business traffic.
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