Employees who surf the Net at work could receive a bill each month for the cost of borrowed bandwidth and wasted time if Australia-based Exinda Networks' URL- and bandwidth-monitoring system takes off.
Exinda Networks says it's developed a system that allows a company to monitor exactly which Web sites are visited by each employee and how much bandwidth has been used--in terms of a cash loss to the employer.
Con Nikolouzakis, director of Exinda Networks, said the URL- and bandwidth-monitoring system was designed to ensure that employees are held responsible for the cost of misused bandwidth and time.
"If you use your office computer for Internet banking and booking theater tickets, you're fine. If you choose to use it to download illegal software, research personal interests or other non-business uses, then you could be issued with a 'please explain' and a bill for the costs of the bandwidth and time you wasted," Nikolouzakis said.
According to Nikolouzakis, access to certain sites can be blocked, and bandwidth abusers can have their bandwidth throttled, which would significantly slow that individual's access to the undesirable Web site. Additionally, the employee could be presented with a bill.
"Theoretically, individual employees could be charged a fee for non-business-related Internet usage on a monthly basis, if an employer wanted to get tough on staff abusing their Web access but didn't want to block them altogether," Nikolouzakis said.
However, not everyone agrees that charging employees for personal bandwidth is a good idea.
James Turner, industry analyst for security and services at Frost & Sullivan, said that charging employees for personal bandwidth usage would stir up a hornet's nest because bandwidth is relatively cheap and employees get a "morale boost" from having some freedom to surf at work.
"Most employees sign an acceptable-Internet-usage policy when they join a new company," Turner said. "After that, there is a level of trust between employer and employee. Companies like Computer Associates already have software that can measure an individual's bandwidth usage, so the technology isn't new, and across the market there is not a huge demand."
However, Turner did agree that there is a need for employers to spot the employees that regularly abuse the system.
"The tiny minority of bandwidth abusers are most likely downloading illegal material (such as pirated movies)," Turner said, "and their employers need to be able to detect and stop this for antipiracy reasons. No company wants to be involved in trafficking stolen goods, and storing illegal digital material is an extension of this."
Just a little warning for those of you that surf at work.
Seriously though, Internet usage should be regualted but not to the point of exclusion. basically stopping downloads of media streams and files would do it.
also billing workers for it would not work as people could use someone else's work station, therefore causing many workplace problems
That's pretty harsh. They should just restrict what sites they can go to and cut all this paying for non work related crap out.
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Bah. If you work at the same sorta place I used to work at, then sometimes you're sitting there for hours in a store where you don't get a lot of customers, behind a desk with a computer that has broadband 'net access. And you having nothing to do but sit there until a customer either walks in the store or comes up to the desk.
We saw nothing wrong with a little web-browsing when the alternative was to sit there doing absolutely nothing, and getting bored out of our skulls. Though whether things have changed at all since I left, I don't know.
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Originally posted by Skystream Bah. If you work at the same sorta place I used to work at, then sometimes you're sitting there for hours in a store where you don't get a lot of customers
Was it an office setting? If not, it doesn't really apply all that much, as in an office, there's always something you could be doing. Most places where you're dealing directly with the customer, it's not as big an issue.
Originally posted by Sixswitch Sounds reasonable to me. You're supposed to be at work to work, not to waste time surfing the internet. I see no problem with it.
Originally posted by fort_max Was it an office setting? If not, it doesn't really apply all that much, as in an office, there's always something you could be doing.
Not my office. During down times, I often do an hour of work before lunch and an hour after lunch, then sit on my hands the rest of the day. The reason why they keep so many staff is that it gets crazy near the end of the semester when people need their transcripts.
Originally posted by fort_max Unfortunately, that's not always possible. Restricting what sites can be visited may interfere with business further down the road.
True, but there are programs that´ll block at least adult content and such - in case you need a certain site, there´ll always be an unrestricted connection.
In a perfect world, this would be a signature. As it stands, it's just the lack of.
Originally posted by Cyberman True, but there are programs that´ll block at least adult content and such - in case you need a certain site, there´ll always be an unrestricted connection.
And that's all fine and good for adult content (except that most blocking programs have strange filters that wind up blocking things like the N.O.W. website...). The problem comes in when people are viewing things like, say, TFArchive at work, rather than doing their job.
Originally posted by RID Scourge Not my office. During down times, I often do an hour of work before lunch and an hour after lunch, then sit on my hands the rest of the day.
Are allows it for the simple reason that if they didn't productivity would go down. Like 300% The amount of money to implement this at this work place, more than the client, or the agent is willing to pay.
Well, some yackazz got caught disclosing classified information (he was terminated, as he should be), so they're watching us now . . . Isn't it great when one person can ruin it for everyone else? I hope they prosecute the asshole for breaking federal law . . .
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