Internet filtering for Primary School

[boolyn]

I've recently finished a network installation in a small school in London. After finishing the installation they are now asking me over internet content filtering software to prevent the students from accessing porn and other sites.

Just a bit of techy background. There are 15 WinXP SP3 workstations, 30MB Fiber Optic broadband, newly installed win 2003 SBS server (although i haven't installed or configure ISA or Exchange, just standard win 2003R2 installation). I am using DHCP to dish out the address of the router across the network. Ideally i would prefer some kind of server solution as it is a lot easier to install and run. I have come across surf control as the main product. What's the most popular content filtering solution in schools? They would prefer to go on a similar system as they are not linked to local education authority.

Anyone any recommendations for any solutions? Any providers that provide cheap charity licences much appreciated.

Thanks
Dave

[jamesreedersmith]

First question why have you gone for SBS 2003, 2011 is now out and in main stream use?

[boolyn]

we have licences for SBS2003

[psillars]

Hi

Many schools have a smoothwall device for the content filtering. It may be slightly overkill for the number of PCs you have. You could look at a SonicWALL NSA 240 with content filtering which would give a nice firewall/content filtering solution.

Just my thoughts.

Paul

[FN-GM]

You could use OpenDNS free fitlering. Not the best but for a primary school i will probably be just fine.

[elsiegee40]

We have just 40 work stations and, when the network was installed 7 years ago, they went for RM as an ISP with RM's SafetyNet Plus filtering as part of the package.

The big advantage is that there is very little for a tiny school to do other than let RM get on with it.

[bio]

+1 for opendns as well

bio..

[dhicks]

Many schools have a smoothwall device for the content filtering. It may be slightly overkill for the number of PCs you have.

I'd second the recommendation for a Smoothwall solution - as this is a smaller school, where I don't imagine the original poster works full time, it should make for a good drop-in solution, which will be worth the money if it saves hassle.

[DT2]

Hey boolyn,
give us a call on 0113 387 4160 and have a chat with one of our guys. They'll be able to give you a good idea of price for comparison.
If you have any tech questions feel free to ask on here.

Darren

[boolyn]

Thanks guys

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

IPCop with DansGuardian is free, fairly easy to setup, and has been protecting our secondary school and feeder primary for over 8 years. It virtualizes really nicely, or runs on stupidly old hardware. You just need two NICs.

[TronXP]

We have used the free version of this in the past, it works pretty well

Untangle

[januttall]

theres a free version of smothwall or i use a custom setup of dansguardian on a ubuntu server

[iMnotgeek]

I should suggest OpenDNS and Netnanny are a good internet filtering software not for free but I think your money is worth it.

[Gaz]

I use a combination of Smoothwall (we are a small organisation but its worth it) and OpenDNS.
The two work well together and so far have not conflicted. The only OpenDNS options I've got on are Porn filter and Proxy filter.
Smoothwall takes care of the rest of the categories as its much more flexible.