How Can you Block IP Adresses in Web Browser

[sade]

We use SmoothWall and have YouTube blocked but the students are entering the IP address into the web browser and getting round it that way. I have blocked the IP address in Smoothwall but it doesn't work. Has anyone come across this or got any suggestions please?

[tom_newton]

You can do one of two things:
1. Get smoothwall to do a reverse lookup on all IPs.
this is on "guardian/proxy/web proxy" and is called "Do a DNS lookup in domain blocking"

Pro: accurate and wont overblock
con: the odd site will still work, DNS lookups pose a small performance penalty

2. You can block all "direct IP access".
You can do this by going to "guardian/filter/policy" and blocking "all URLs that contain an IP" which is a special inbuilt filter.

Pro: bulletproof, fast
con: the odd site which is "IP only" will be blocked

The third method is to block the IP by entering it in a custom defined list. This sucks in general though as it takes time (yours) which no-one likes doing