Effects of network quality of service on workplace productivity

The Internet has become an effective tool within the work environment, but with this vital tool comes a downfall with the loss of work productivity through employee distraction. Previous attempts at providing widespread bans and blocks of illegitimate sites have caused issues with Internet access and various Internet related services and also employee morale. The use of banning IP address and redirecting the IP addresses to business websites informing of improper use are proving to be ineffective in the attempt to create working environment with an internal barricade to prevent these abuses of company policies and work productivity. The use of firewalls and various other technologies to enable this prevention has proven to be ineffective and is capable of being bypassed by experienced users with information technology knowledge. Advancements with modern computing technology attempt to correct the issues within programs such as CyberPatrol and Netnanny. The current solutions to combat the loss of productivity are only solved within one basic solution, with alterations depending from program to program, but the software never evolves to into anything beyond the original method. This thesis discusses the effects of network Quality of Service on workplace productivity and how both can be maintained respectively. This thesis adopts the philosophies of its counterparts in the fact that productivity must be maintained but with an alternate scheme of preventing access to Internet resources. Effective and objective, the "productivity filter" proposes the use of a penalty without the knowledge of the user. In effect this thesis extracts the philosophies of the current technologies and applies a different view to solving the problem of reducing non-work related Internet activity.