Using XP-Pro firewall to prevent MP3 downloads??

[terry]

I have 12 new XP-Pro machines in a high school library. Despite
typical warnings some students manage to get an MP3 download running
in the background.

The school is mixed Mac/PC and the servers and system proxy/firewall
are Mac, with little/no active support person.

Can I configure the XP-Pro firewall on a per-machine basis to block
downloads of a particular filetype?

Any other ideas on how to block MP3 downloads?? Others must be having
this problem, and hopefully have some solution other than outmoded
approaches involving 30 Cm rulers (Here in Actually Metric Africa) and
knuckles, like when I was in 5th grade. That was a real long time ago!

Regards, Terry King ...On The Mediterranean in Carthage

 

[Leythos]

I have 12 new XP-Pro machines in a high school library. Despite
typical warnings some students manage to get an MP3 download running
in the background.

The school is mixed Mac/PC and the servers and system proxy/firewall
are Mac, with little/no active support person.

Can I configure the XP-Pro firewall on a per-machine basis to block
downloads of a particular filetype?

Any other ideas on how to block MP3 downloads?? Others must be having
this problem, and hopefully have some solution other than outmoded
approaches involving 30 Cm rulers (Here in Actually Metric Africa) and
knuckles, like when I was in 5th grade. That was a real long time ago!

Regards, Terry King ...On The Mediterranean in Carthage

Being in a school, I would expect that you also have a real firewall at
the border - meaning there is a firewall appliance protecting your
entire network behind the Internet connection. Many firewalls, the good
ones, allow you to block what a user can connect to, and can even block
content by type (such as MP3's in HTTP sessions or SMTP)....

What tools are they using to get into the MP3?

If they are able to install applications you really need to lock the
computers down so that they can't install MP3 sharing apps.