Today kicks off the March Madness basketball tournament and in case you haven’t heard, CBS is broadcasting all 63 NCAA games live - and free - on the Internet. All you need is broadband to tune in.
What makes this particularly relevant to YOU is the fact that many of the games are being played during the workday.
According to an article in the San Jose Mercury News, network admins are blocking the site(s) broadcasting the games because they’re concerned all that streaming video is going to slow down their networks. Unlike the reasons you might block adult sites or social networking sites, there’s nothing inappropriate or unsafe about the NCAA tournament. But without question if several people on your network were watching the games, it could slow things down.
The SJ Mercury is doing a poll, asking people if video is blocked where they work. Right now it’s almost a tie between yes and no answers.
Are you blocking the games?
(If you aren’t and want to, it’s as easy as signing into your account and adding NCAASports.com to your block list. 
)
Ricky Cain
Who would block the games, I can see educational institutes doing so. For bandwith consumption, or distractions.
posted on March 21st, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Tim
I like my job, if I block sports events I will get fired, even if it does kill my internet connection
posted on March 25th, 2008 at 3:11 am
Wesley Corie
My users are educated to not use streaming video in the office unless it’s a mandatory training video. If anyone starts watching sports in the office anywhere other than then the 50″ plama in the break room - I’ll be all over OpenDNS blocking the streaming sites. We host stuff at our location, so we are pretty tight on bandwidth.
posted on March 26th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
andy
we are having a party and watching the games together. I would never work for a place so strapped for bandwidth that they block users from doing what they want. We *are* adults right?
posted on March 26th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Rhys Owen
We have unlimited bandwidth so aslong as they are doing their work, it’s fine. If work starts to slack, I will block these streaming networks.
posted on March 27th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Kilroy Was Here
In my experience users are not ’saints’ and will abuse the priviledge. I blocked ncaasports and cbssports because I noticed a significant decrease in bandwidth and was able to track it down to these sites [while the games were playing].
posted on March 30th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Khürt Williams
I’m the web filter manager ( we use Webwasher ) for my employer and I have been blocking Streaming Media and Media Downloads ( iTunes, CinemaNow etc ) for almost 3 years. We once had an issue where end of day business could not complete because the network was 100% used. Streaming sports content was the culprit.
posted on April 27th, 2008 at 3:38 am