Plausible deniability

'what happened sir? couldnt have possibly been me because ... !'

- Also, if your planning to use it in a work environment i would suggest talking to higher powers to ask if you are allowed. Chances are the bosses will be pissed off you even asked, but at least you've confirmed if you can / cant.

If they sack you after 18 years for a bit of bandwidth abuse, then i say contact your union and see if there is anything that can be done. If there have been no kind of warnings which prohibit usage of streaming media on company network you might have a case to appeal.

Andrew

My website featuring more slingbox help is at www.butkus.co.uk

I would posit that it's the wireless router connected to and broadcasting the company's network that concern's Joe's company. The SB is just icing on the cake...

In one sense, I am not too surprised. IT people are always a very protective bunch, and I can't blame them as the security threats that exist today are real. Putting a wireless router behind a firewall is in one sense leaving a door open that can be taken advantage of. WEP encryption though OK for home, is at best a very crude form of defense for the corporate world.

As for bandwidth, the company should start to scream if people start hogging 300-600 kb/s of throughput. Most small locations still use a T1 which is 1.5 Mb/s, the cost to go above that becomes quite large (approx $500 -$1000 extra per month). If you had a company of 50 employees, a T1 would normally be sufficient, if just two employees started using Slingboxes, that could account for anywhere between 40% to 80% of the available bandwidth. Every IT person I have ever spoken to, monitor usage to see who the bandwidth hogs are. They then dig deeper to see what users are doing and if it is legit or not.

I hope you just get away with a reprimand Joe. I used to be in Senior Management with a large Telecom Vendor, and unless it was a case of blatant stealing, I always took the route of a warning first, even if they only had a couple of months service in the company.

I am sure we will see many more stories on these boards of people suddenly finding themselves in hot water at work. Though you may manage port workarounds, you simply cannot stream 300kb/s and hope to go unnoticed.

Joe, I work in IT in a similar position as your network administrator.

It is serious to them, however, its not THAT serious, people make mistakes.

Were you ever warned about doing this? is there an acceptable use policy etc? We have things like this crop up every so often but we dont terminate valuable staff members that cost a fortune to train and groom into productive workers. We give them the 5th degree and threaten etc, but on a first time offense its not that big a deal.

Hopefully your company values employees and realizes that people make mistakes.

Your best bet is to act completely computer illiterate and take all that gear home ASAP.

I wish you the best.

For the rest of you out there thinking about slinging at work, DO NOT DO IT, unless you know exactly where you stand on network usage and what is acceptable. Most large companies have a zero tolerance policy tied to computer/Internet acceptable use policy.

Network people can see exactly what you doing and even intercept your data stream and see what you are looking at.

Be aware, be smart.

You were lucky indeed.

If you changed the wep key daily someone would have a hard time breaking the encryption, but it is an extra security measure. Also at most the attacker would only have access to the data from your computer, or be able to access the net on company cost, both of which are slim!

My website featuring more slingbox help is at www.butkus.co.uk

im sure if u contacted your IT department, and explained u wish to stream some tv for a few minutes each day to catch up on local news, i doubt they would have any objections. Just make sure u ask before u do it.

My website featuring more slingbox help is at www.butkus.co.uk

Joe,

I'm VERY glad to hear things worked out okay for you. Blake, our CEO, was also rooting for you, he'll be relieved to hear the update!

Best,
Jeremy

I've been following this with interest... I'm glad you still have a job ;)

Todd/Indy

The entire SlingCommunity Team has been watching this thread with great interest, and was relieved to find out you weren't heading for the nearest unemployment line...especially since the mobile player isn't available yet (what would you do while waiting?). Seriously, we're very happy things worked out for you.

Bringing your own router to work is crazy enough, but we still can't believe you asked HR about using EVDO to hit your Slingbox RIGHT AFTER you nearly lost your job. This tells us you're seriously addicted to your Slingbox, which is exactly why you deserve a SlingCommunity T-shirt. Congratulations! We will contact you soon to get your info. Wear it proud... you've earned it.