Gear Up the Guard Dog
If you plan to let outside hosts access your ILS server, you need to open ports on your firewall for ILS communications. Table 1 lists the TCP ports you must modify, depending on the network protocol you're running. For help reconfiguring your firewall, consult Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q158623, "How to Establish NetMeeting Connections Through a Firewall" (http://premium.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q158/6/23.asp).
You must consider two security problems ILS creates. First, if you're going to make your ILS server publicly accessible, consider giving it a name other than ils.yourcompanyname.com, which reveals that the server holds your ILS system. (The less other people know about your system security, the better; however, a determined person can discover the nature of your ILS server through other means.)
Second, seriously consider the security concerns inherent in letting outside Internet users make unsolicited inbound connections to your desktop computers. After all, you probably purchased a firewall to prevent outsiders from accessing your internal systems. Be sure your security measures are extremely well defined before you launch an ILS server for external users.
Make Your Best Friend Better
Once your ILS server is securely running, you can make it friendlier to your clients by implementing one of the ASP scripts that Microsoft includes with ILS. You can easily merge this script into your company's Web site.
To test your new system, have a few users connect to your ILS server and start NetMeeting. Then, open your Web browser and set its location to http://machinename/ILS/Templates/ilsfind.asp. You'll see a screen that looks like Screen 2. In this screen, you can either view a list of all the users connected to the ILS server or search for specific users by their email addresses. If ILS finds the person you're looking for, a Microsoft NetMeeting hyperlink appears. Click the link to launch NetMeeting and connect to the other user.
Search Parties
Now that you know how to set up an ILS server, how can ILS benefit your company? One of ILS's most exciting uses is helping people establish desktop video conferencing connections.
For years, I've expected a leap in the popularity of desktop video conferencing. Every year, companies release products that I expect to make video conferencing ubiquitous, but it remains low on my corporate clients' list of priorities.
Perhaps the most prevalent obstacle facing people who use video conferencing and other collaboration software is finding and connecting to one another across the Internet. ILS eliminates that problem.
Set up an ILS server, and your users will be able to find one another with a few mouse clicks. High-tech conferencing and collaboration have never been so easy.
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