AOL Instant Messenger
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is a very popular application that many students use over our Internet
connection. At the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year, it appears several users began
downloading files through AIM. We discovered this because other AIM users were unable to login at all.
At that time we tested a policy for AIM that limited the bandwidth available to each individual active user, with the thought that by enforcing a chat-only
amount of bandwidth for each, many more would be able to get online and use this service.
What we discovered was that this function was not very effective or efficient, and it has
since been turned off. At this point, we allocate a pool of bandwidth for AIM, like we do
for P2P apps, and all users share equal access to this AIM bandwidth. Again, limiting
AIM usage to chat only will ensure all are able to share this resource which many consider
vital. A few users who decide to download files using AIM will use all the available
bandwidth and make everyone else's AIM experience highly frustrating. With all that said,
it is NOT our policy or bandwidth limitations that are causing drops after 2-5 minutes
of connection time. We experienced an identical problem last year and it turned out to be
a version issue with the client, due to AOL trying to block out 3rd party AIM clients like
Trillian. We suspect this is again the case, and can only suggest updating to the latest
AIM version and notifying AOL if problems persist.
At aim.com you can also find "AIM Express", an AIM application that runs just like the regular AIM except it runs in a
browser. AIM Express seems stable at this point even if the client isn't.
Bottom line is, when you run an application we don't build that connects to servers we don't own, please
understand that we have very little control over if and how well it works. We have
allocated sufficient bandwidth to support many hundreds of AIM sessions without slowing
them down or cutting anyone off, so if this is happening it's either file transfers over AIM
or an application version issue.
Related Information:
Judge Shuts Down Aimster
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