FWSM 4.0 and MSN Messenger

[paulomv]

Hi,

My customer currently has a couple of FWSM running version 3.2 and we are having some trouble blocking MSN Messenger.

By the release notes of version 4.0, it seems that the policy filtering is much more complete. we are considering on upgrading to version 4.0 to see if we can block that kind of traffic.

Did anyone already succeeded on blocking Messenger with this version?

Thanks

[didyap]

Generally, you would need to add a filter on your router (access-list) so it does not allow TCP connections to the messenger service by blocking the TCP port listed and also port 80. Keep in mind that MSN may change the Ip address from time to time and this will require you to add/change the access-list so your internal users are unable to access the updated servers.

If you had a proxy server this will be the preferred way of blocking this type of service.