How can I hide my network activity from monitoring?

Question

Is there any way to hide my activity on the network?

My network administrator monitors our network activity, specifically chat.

Answer 1

In most locations, network admins have the legal right (and sometimes legal responsibility) to monitor traffic on their network. Trying to circumvent their policies is typically grounds for complete banning from their network or initiating legal consequences. I hope you know what you're doing. :)

There's multiple definitions of 'hiding activity'. If you want to prevent traffic analysis then you could route all your traffic through a single proxy off the network, regardless of its real destination. You could use simple software such as ssh(1) or stunnel(1) tunnels, or more complicated software such as pppd(8) over ssh(1), or VPN clients such as OpenVPN, VPNC, PPTP, openconnect, etc. Or you could use very complicated software such as IPsec stacks.

If you simply want to prevent eavesdropping, you could use protocols such as SILC, SSL IRC, Jabber with TLS, or similar encrypted protocols.