We have a network with 40-50 PC on a very low bandwidth connection.

What I wounder about is if it is possible to somehow limit the bandwidth that msn uses when sending pictures/files or when using voice/camera options. Or even block thees services but still leave MSN able to connect to msn network and chat.

Is this possible. does msn use different protocols or mime types for this or port number.

would be highly appreciated if someone could help with this.

ygg

I once (unintentionally) did this to myself on Mac OS X with the iChat client. I was running a daemon called "Throttled" to prevent my BitTorrent upload speed from going over a certain amount as my crappy client at that time didn't have an upload limiter. Problem was that Throttled operates at a lower level and, by default, controls the up/down bandwidth for the entire system. Soooooo, when my torrents approached the limit I had set via Throttled, web browsing and anything else involving network traffic slowed to a crawl. A girl I was talking to for a while via the Internet (never got to meet her, after 3 years) first tipped me off that my messages were coming in small floods after unusually long delays. Finally realized that Throttled was causing my iChat outbound traffic to queue up such that it would all be sent at once when there was a break in other outbound traffic.

Anyway, point is that you could impose a bandwidth limit on the entire system, but it's not an elegant way to do it. A better way would be via NetLimiter or another per-application packetshaping tool. Just impose a harsh limit on MSN such that there'll be enough bandwidth for text to move in and out freely, but it'll be impractical for binary files to transmit.

As far as a hard-and-fast limit on "text only, no other data xmit/recv'd," I have no idea if MSN supports it or not. Furthermore, I'm not aware of any third-party tools that can do that (though this is not to say that they do not exist).