Which Webfilter?

[SiP]

Hi there,

In recent months we've been getting more and more dissatisfied with our local county provided Internet service and we've decided to go it alone.

We're going around the houses getting quotes from all over the place and I just wondered if anyone had any advice on who to go with in terms of web filtering. I really like the look of Smoothwall for firewall/filtering but there are other companies out there such as Watchguard that seem to be quite a lot cheaper, but the lower price worries me that there may be something I'm missing and to be honest we've had enough of unreliable and need something solid from day one that can provide us with easy to use web filtering that doesn't rely on me sitting there all day adding websites to a black list (which is effectively our current system).

 

So anyone's experiences positive or negative with Web filtering would be appreciated. It's for a mid-large Secondary School.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Dos_Box

[glennda]

I am telling you now if you are in Education Watchguard will not peform to what you need to do.

[SiP]

Sorry is there any chance you can elaborate a bit on that, thanks

[glennda]

Sorry is there any chance you can elaborate a bit on that, thanks

 

It isn't granular enough nor is it comprehensive enough to cover a school on the webfilter side.

 

Firewall brilliant webfilter not.

[zag]

Lightspeed are one of the big smoothwall competitors.

 

They have a lot simpler interface I think and it does things like block p2p with a single click.

[cpjitservices]

We use Dansguardian with Squid. Both Free.

[john]

Hi there,

In recent months we've been getting more and more dissatisfied with our local county provided Internet service and we've decided to go it alone.

We're going around the houses getting quotes from all over the place and I just wondered if anyone had any advice on who to go with in terms of web filtering. I really like the look of Smoothwall for firewall/filtering but there are other companies out there such as Watchguard that seem to be quite a lot cheaper, but the lower price worries me that there may be something I'm missing and to be honest we've had enough of unreliable and need something solid from day one that can provide us with easy to use web filtering that doesn't rely on me sitting there all day adding websites to a black list (which is effectively our current system).

 

So anyone's experiences positive or negative with Web filtering would be appreciated. It's for a mid-large Secondary School.

 

Smoothwall all the way for me, used it in 2 schools and its never let us down and neither have the team at Smoothwall

[SiP]

Smoothwall all the way for me, used it in 2 schools and its never let us down and neither have the team at Smoothwall

 

Thanks John, is there anything in particular about Smoothwall that makes it your choice?

[Watty08]

We have just had a quote for 10k for smoothwall and thats without their hardware. We used RM Smart Cache before which was wasn't good but cost £490 pa. Its going to be a hard task pursuading the governors to stump up that much more!

[zag]

We have just had a quote for 10k for smoothwall and thats without their hardware. We used RM Smart Cache before which was wasn't good but cost £490 pa. Its going to be a hard task pursuading the governors to stump up that much more!

 

Unfortunately they appear to have increased their prices in recent years. Then again they are a fast growing company so if people are prepared to pay that then we cant really complain. I know filtering is a big part of our school.

 

I like the box and the development features, but their support response times and value for money have been going badly downhill with their success.

 

I'm certainly going to compare other systems when our 3 year deal is up.

Edited October 15, 2013 by zag

[Watty08]

Thanks for that feedback Zag. Certainly will be shopping around.

[TheMrB]

We use a hardware appliance from Sophos that generally does the job we need.

We are prepping to come away from our local council run ISP and go it alone ourselves. And while we will lose the county's access to smoothwall, we are more than confident that the box from sophos will do the job we need.

 

It took me about an hour to get our first one up and running.

You roll in groups from AD, tell it what types of sites each group can get (educational, avertising, streaming media etc etc etc) and frommthere you leave the categorisation to Sophos.

Occasionally, you need to change a website's group, or add one of the more obscure sites (our business and IT department regularly have us unblocking uncatagorised sites from local businesses)

All in all, it works very well. It isn't particularly expensive and buing the box gives you access to a virtual build FOC which I recently used to build a farm after an update dropped the internet for an hour (Not Sophos' fault)

 

Just my two penneth.

[zag]

The Sophos box was excellent, a far better interface than smoothwall which had only 3 clicks to access any feature.

 

I loved it but when ours died one day, sophos didnt appear to support it very well. They sent us a few old reconditioned servers and I got the feeling they didn't care very much.

[sidewinder]

It isn't granular enough nor is it comprehensive enough to cover a school on the webfilter side.

 

Firewall brilliant webfilter not.

 

Perhaps not for a large secondary but for a smaller prep school like mine it has been fine. It blocks what it needs to and does so very well.

 

Also noticed in the newest version there is an option to use Websense cloud for filtering rather than running Webblocker on a local server. Whether thats a good thing depends on how you view Websense I guess

[glennda]

Perhaps not for a large secondary but for a smaller prep school like mine it has been fine. It blocks what it needs to and does so very well.

 

Also noticed in the newest version there is an option to use Websense cloud for filtering rather than running Webblocker on a local server. Whether thats a good thing depends on how you view Websense I guess

 

Really?

 

If I am honest anything that uses URL based filtering rather than inspection like Smoothwall does wouldn't cut it in Education.

[TheMrB]

The Sophos box was excellent, a far better interface than smoothwall which had only 3 clicks to access any feature.

 

I loved it but when ours died one day, sophos didnt appear to support it very well. They sent us a few old reconditioned servers and I got the feeling they didn't care very much.

Yeah, we had one die. and our replacement was very clearly a recon. An argumentitive phone call later (I was very Irate, the NM had disappeared off on holiday leaving me with broken sophos box and no internet) they sent me a new one.

Now, with the virtual appliance included, I don't care if this one dies. I have a running one with a template I can bring up at any time!

 

Support for it, as it is for most cases with Sophos, was a case of get some logs and hope I forget to contact them back.

But I've only needed support twice in the last 4 years, so I'm not going to grumble too hard about them.

[mdench]

+1 for Smoothwall it works soo well. It's so easy to block / unblock something for the school. The ability to allow for certain groups, or for custom locations. The built in VPN is fantastic for connecting and working from home if needed. The support is fantastic sometimes can take a while to get through but when they do ring back its normally quickly resolved.

[john]

Thanks John, is there anything in particular about Smoothwall that makes it your choice?

 

Simplicity of the product, the fact they listen to customers for feedback and integrate that into the product (a number of features tucked away in it are "John features / Ideas"), they know education a good number of staff have been in our seats and involved in our jobs so they know what its like having the SLT breathing down your neck which is a plus and its just so flexible and configurable that I couldn't fault it. It literally was plug in, basic config in, change proxy to it and off we go The OOB policies, albeit a bit harsh at times, are good and you can sleep a bit easier. They also are quick to add new content which is a plus you also have the comfort in known that a good number of Countys use it so must be something good about it as they don't buy into these things quickly and easily! They are also a UK company and UK based which I always liked Unlike many others who have no real UK base or have a support office for a US firm and thus lack that core UK understanding Smoothwall have that with here being the home and founding spot Oh and its a Yorkshire company

[zag]

Simplicity of the product

 

Sorry what? Smoothwall is the most complicated filter I have ever used hehe. There must be 1000+ options to click on in the main interface.

 

Other solutions have far better UI's and features.

 

I asked a question on how to block torrents today which you would think would be a standard tick box on a school web filter but apparently it isn't :/

 

Same thing for using youtube for schools, other filters have a option to turn it on while smoothwall requires much more complicated setup.

 

I do agree with the rest though, its a good company and huge potential for the product, but certainly not simple.

[john]

Sorry what? Smoothwall is the most complicated filter I have ever used hehe. There must be 1000+ options to click on in the main interface.

 

Other solutions have far better UI's and features.

 

I asked a question on how to block torrents today which you would think would be a standard tick box on a school web filter but apparently it isn't :/

 

Same thing for using youtube for schools, other filters have a option to turn it on while smoothwall requires much more complicated setup.

 

I do agree with the rest though, its a good company and huge potential for the product, but certainly not simple.

 

I have used Surfcontrol, Websense and Smoothie (and been a Smoothie user for eeerr too many years now!) and it is the simplest filter of them all, Youtube Education is a couple of rules, well documented I will add, and a line of code from YouTube so you don't get much simpler than that really. It also gives you the flexibility and power to do it exactly how you want.

 

IF you feel that way tell them its too complex @tom_newton and team love feedback so tell them why you think its too complex and where the 1000+ options are and how you would improve it, it won't get better if you don't tell them

[SiP]

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far, it's helping us form our choices, I've got a demo booked in with Smoothwalll and an over the web Demo with Lightspeed as well, and still emailing around other places to see what they have to offer. So far Smoothwalll have impressed me with how quickly they are getting back to me!

[Watty08]

We're at the same stage as you Sip. Got a web demo on thursday.

[tom_newton]

Interesting thread. @zag - blocking tor is a one click op - assuming you have a firewall block rule set up somewhere, adding the layer7 tor inspection is one ticky. Admittedly it is a reasonably well hidden ticky... but we are slowly improving findability on our GUi - yeah, its a big old beast as we've the most full featured product!

 

Also worth pointing our that you won't block tor etc on a web filter per se - you need to be using some firewall functionality for that, as tor simply ain't going to go through your proxy. In a Smoothwall sense this would be either a UTm or bridge deployment (Lightspeed I think is generally bridge type or bypass, either will work, sophos, AFAIK will do neither, do correct me if Im wrong)

[zag]

Here is what I'm talking about in terms of simplicity of interface:

 

Lightspeed

http://www.lightspeedsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/WebFilter-General-e1358543503559.png

 

 

Sophos

http://softek.co.uk/prod/so/imgs/scrnshots/eapp/tour-screenshot-fullsize1.gif

 

I particularly love the way the sophos box has 1 green tick to show you all services are running on the main page.

 

Smoothwall has 38 status indicators taking up half the screen!

Edited October 16, 2013 by zag

[HPlum78]

I have used a number of these products over the years but 3 years ago moved to Sophos and have just renewed for another 3 years, these are good boxes and I have not paid a lot to be honest. Setting up WCCP on this box was a simple on this box as well something I have had problems with in the past on other systems, that said I have not touched any other product for a long time so cannot comment how others do in this area anymore. This along with devices profiles make managing guest/ BYOD wireless services easy also easy to setup.