ISA Server 2006

[Norphy]

I know I'm about a month behind the curve here but I've only just noticed it and I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere on the site

MS have released a beta version of ISA 2006. It barely seems like ten minutes ago I installed ISA 2000 in school then found about 2004. Now 2006 is nearly here? Wow!

Anyone installed it and played with it yet? What do they think?

[eejit]

No, but I am dying (figuratively) to get on that beta.

[john]

I have only just got 2004 sort of fully working with websense and were going off on a new one again! Dam you Bill Gates! Stuff ISA for now, and lets get Vista and LH Server here ON TIME for once!

[spc-rocket]

Yeah ISA 2006 beta out few weeks ago, have downloaded and installed it on a test machine. Doesn't seem to offer much apart from easier wixards to create the certificates and web/server publishing.

I think ISA 2004 with SP2 looks very similar to ISA 2006. The only thing i've notced apart from the way to publish various things the support for LDAP on publishing web servers etc. Its handy if your isa server is not joined to a domain and you have another domain that is not trusted.

Our isa 2004 sp1 seem to be working well and got it working the way the way we want it. Got surf control on it as well and it completements it very well.


Ashok.

[eejit]

Our isa 2004 sp1 seem to be working well and got it working the way the way we want it. Got surf control on it as well and it completements it very well.

Are you saying that Surf Control have an ISA plugin?

[eejit]

Our isa 2004 sp1 seem to be working well and got it working the way the way we want it. Got surf control on it as well and it completements it very well.

Are you saying that Surf Control have an ISA plugin?

Actually I've just found it myself on their website. How good is it? I presume that you can use it to block certain words from urls as you can't in ISA, plus they'll have their own blacklist. Is that right?
Cheers

[CyberNerd]

you guys seen this: http://www.smoothwall.net/products/schoolguardian4/

What does ISA 2006 do that smoothie doesn't ?

[eejit]

I haven't used Smoothwall for a couple of years now, but although it was a great firewall it's pretty basic otherwise. ISA has a lot more capabilities including a client which means blocking messenger etc is much easier.

[indiegirl]

Other than Surf Control, is there anything else that I can look at that's cheap / free and will work alongside ISA Server 2004? We use ISA as a basic ip / URL blocking, but it isn't nice. I want something that will sit happily with ISA (I looked at squidcache and Dansguardian but they seem to do the firewall thing as well) - is Dansguardian easy to configure with ISA, or should I look to something that costs but is a plugin (like Surfcontrol)??

I'm no ISA whizz, but I'd like to be :-D

[Geoff]

I looked at squidcache and Dansguardian but they seem to do the firewall thing as well

No it doesn't. Firewalling is handled by Shorewall/IPTables. An entirely different and unrelated kettle of fish.

If you did move to Squid + Dansguardian, it would render your ISA server slightly irrelevant. Is that what you meant?

[indiegirl]

OK, I see... but yes, the idea that if I moved to Squid + Dansguardian, it would render the ISA pointless.

I didn't choose the ISA, everything that I work with was implemented before I arrived here.

Basically, I need something that allows me to filter web content but will also be happy alongside ISA... but doesn't cost the earth.

I know, I'm asking too much.....

As an afterthought - can I implement Smoothwall in front of the ISA, or would that take some work, and time (I don't have)?

[webman]

We have an IPCop (basically a fork of Smoothwall) box as the gateway of our internal LAN subnet with Advanced Proxy + URL Filter addons installed. It serves as our firewall and router. It does support parent proxies, but not 100% sure it would work with ISA. I'm pretty certain you can just use the one NIC with IPCop with an IP address on your subnet, but don't quote me on that

[ChrisH]

You wouldnt need a Smoothwall box and ISA. If you insist on keeping ISA you just need to build a vanilla box with Squid and DG. You need to think what each one is going to give you a whether you can do with just the one setup.
Dansguardian will provide you with superior filtering compared to what you will have to pay to put on a ISA box.
I have used it for 18 months and you cant really fault it. What extra is ISA going to give you apart from some of these policies to control apps? You can do this with GP and firewall rules to an extent.

If you want an easy to set up squid/DG check out www.censornet.com . It will authenticate against AD and has a good web management for reporting. The only gripe most people have is it still doesnt support NTLM authentication but that is something they are going to rectify soon. You make like this or do as I did and learn from it and build your own setup.

There is something nagging in the back of my mind about ISA and authentication from Squid or some similar issue.

[spc-rocket]

Hi eejit

SurfControl do have a black list and it works on the categories so websites are categoriesed and everyday or every hour the list can be automatically be updated from the central servers.

You have then in surfcontrol the option to allow certain categories to be allowed and others to be blocked. You can also create url lists, domain name lists, ip adress etc and then apply it to groups of users. If isa is joined to a domain then surf control can use the AD to read group and user information so its very flexible.

The only thing is that its not cheap but its is a very good product.

Ashok.