My company uses ICQ for internal chatting related to company business. They used to use MSN, but people were doing too much chatting outside of business. ICQ is terrible. Can MIRC be used internally?

I searched for information on this topic, but did not find what I was looking for.

the bigger problem would be that it can easily go outside, like MSN (and I can't see why ICQ cant go out and play too). Unless your company set up an IRCd on a server and did not allow internet connection to the outside.

I don't know how it was set up, but we can only ICQ inside. There must be some reason why they chose ICQ over others. Do you know of any IM programs that you can limit to inside by design or that you can choose to use inside or out?

There is something called Rendezvous that you might want to look into. An IM app for Windows known as Trillian supports it. Look at the link below.

http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/features/index.php?select=9

If they really wanted to, they could probably set up an IRC network/server on some unusual port (not 6667, for example). Then, if they block all the usual IRC ports, you would only be able to connect to the network/server that uses that unusual port number. For all intents and purposes, it would be an internal chatting system. Note that whoever was running the network/server would need to set some form of ban on all addresses that are not internal so that only internal connections can access it, or you may have random people connecting from outside your company.

Although I haven't ever used Rendevous, I do use Trillian and have seen it. If it is available outside of Trillian, it could do what was needed. You wouldn't be able to use it within Trillian because Trillian can access all the other networks, so could go outside with AIM/ICQ/MSN/etc.