web Filtering Products

[Grommit]

Looking at other types of filtering as Netsweeper seems to be not fit for purpose..

 

Looking at School Guardian but it seems very expensive... £3000 for 400 pCs ?

 

any suggestions ?

[plock]

Grommit - This has been discussed extensively. Try searching on the forums or trying a site:edugeek.net filtering on Google?

[Sylv3r]

Censornet 4 is a purchasable product or the free version of smoothwall with dans guardian plugin would work.

[FN-GM]

Websense is pretty good. We have been using it for a couple of months it works well. The support is good as well.

 

Z

[Grommit]

Grommit - This has been discussed extensively. Try searching on the forums or trying a site:edugeek.net filtering on Google?

 

I se that is has been discussed... but I am looking for advice to which one the Edugeek Members believe is the best..

 

I'm looking at Bloxx as well

[dhicks]

This has been discussed extensively. Try searching on the forums or trying a site:edugeek.net filtering on Google?

 

Interestingly, you hardly need the filter part - this site seems to be fast becoming the top Google search result for several technologies generally used in schools. Everyone be mindful what you say, the world is listening...

 

I see that is has been discussed... but I am looking for advice to which one the Edugeek Members believe is the best...

 

We simply use Squid as a transparent proxy with SquidGuard doing the filtering. No client-side proxies to configure, anyone who plugs into our network (wired or wireless) gets their Internet connection filtered, there is simply no physical way to avoid the filter. URL block list updates are £100 a year.

 

--

David Hicks

[Geoff]

Built our own box running Ubuntu/Squid/Dansguardian. Took me about a day. Cost £900 for the dell hardware. We have around 150 concurrent clients at any one time.

[plock]

@Grommit - No worries!

 

@dhicks - Indeed I've noticed the same!

 

I'd have to go with Squid as a cheap option. Bloxx is also good, but rather pricy for most organisations.

[tom_newton]

That sounds a *little* on the high side for SG08.

 

Give me a call and i'm sure we can find something to suit - to be honest there's not a lot out there lower priced than SG, and what there is often doesn't come up to scratch. In the "BETCA certified" list, there's only really ourselves, Websense & Netsweeper.

 

You could try rolling your own - i'm not going to recommend against it simply because of a commercial bias, a lot of people on here have done it. You should be prepared for a lot of work, however.

[spc-rocket]

That sounds a *little* on the high side for SG08.

 

Give me a call and i'm sure we can find something to suit - to be honest there's not a lot out there lower priced than SG, and what there is often doesn't come up to scratch. In the "BETCA certified" list, there's only really ourselves, Websense & Netsweeper.

 

You could try rolling your own - i'm not going to recommend against it simply because of a commercial bias, a lot of people on here have done it. You should be prepared for a lot of work, however.

 

I'm really wondering how on earth did NetSweeper bagged the BECTA accreditation. shocking !!!!

 

Ash.

[Guest Guest]

I'm really wondering how on earth did NetSweeper bagged the BECTA accreditation. shocking !!!!

 

Ash.

 

I wonder aboput quite a few companies!

[dezt]

We use censornet v3 here, even for a linux newbee like me it was quite easy to setup with the right advice from everyone here.

[Outpost]

Funny enough ABTutor Control built-in filtering has pretty much stopped all naughtiness here. Use dansguardian (IPCop) at home, faultless.

[GrumbleDook]

I'm really wondering how on earth did NetSweeper bagged the BECTA accreditation. shocking !!!!

 

Ash.

 

The frustrating thing for me is the lack of text level filtering and poor intelligence. Then again, all bidders went for a pretty standard 'Becta accredited' setup that deals with large scale installs.

 

@Tom

 

I would be interested in hearing about the largest setup that you have. Anything at LA or RBC level yet?

[Geoff]

Funny enough ABTutor Control built-in filtering has pretty much stopped all naughtiness here. Use dansguardian (IPCop) at home, faultless.

 

Indeed, we have it here, if used properly it will. However it sometimes seems the teacher does not bother/care.

[tom_newton]

@ Tony - yes we do have a number of large installs - (1000s of PCs) both here and in the states. PM me for details - can't name names publically without permission from t'customer

 

TBH, our software is primarily designed around the "single network" model - that's the "best fit". We increasingly see large central installs giving various filtering profiles by originating IP, and then bigger schools taking a NG/SG licence themselves (at no extra licence cost)

[spc-rocket]

The frustrating thing for me is the lack of text level filtering and poor intelligence. Then again, all bidders went for a pretty standard 'Becta accredited' setup that deals with large scale installs.

 

@Tom

 

I would be interested in hearing about the largest setup that you have. Anything at LA or RBC level yet?

 

Hi Tony,

 

Yes the one you mentioned are some of the limitations but the really difficult thing with the central filtering is that the school will lose the ability to allow/disallow sites by users (unless i gues you could login to the portal) so teaching staff can access more sites than student say for example.

 

At the moment out setup is working very well for us and we can choose the type of acces we give the students, staff, TAs etc. Now of course with the centralised web filtering this could be lost or difficult to implement.

 

Ash.

[tom_newton]

@Ash - you're right, that's when the filter becomes really useful, when local users can interact more with it. This is why we are now developing a number of new systems to allow better feedback & control for staff & students. It's just not really viable when done centrally.... only sane to do "base level" filtering centrally, ie porn, warez, all the really undesirable things, but even then you might lose some reporting capability.

[GrumbleDook]

Hi Tony,

 

Yes the one you mentioned are some of the limitations but the really difficult thing with the central filtering is that the school will lose the ability to allow/disallow sites by users (unless i gues you could login to the portal) so teaching staff can access more sites than student say for example.

 

At the moment out setup is working very well for us and we can choose the type of acces we give the students, staff, TAs etc. Now of course with the centralised web filtering this could be lost or difficult to implement.

 

Ash.

 

The idea is that they do indeed log into the portal before going elsewhere onto the 'Net. A school has site level filtering set at 4 (the top level) and then they login to get user level filtering, which can be grouped.

 

The bit where this falls down is that it takes the IP from the client machine and if you are using a firewall between you and the RBC it appears that most traffic would come fro the same IP (the WAN port of the firewall) ... hence why the SNB tells you no firewall or inline proxy / filter.

[DMcCoy]

The bit where this falls down is that it takes the IP from the client machine and if you are using a firewall between you and the RBC it appears that most traffic would come fro the same IP (the WAN port of the firewall) ... hence why the SNB tells you no firewall or inline proxy / filter.

 

I shudder at the thought of ever having to run an entire network without its own firewall, it seems to be bad practise on so many levels.

 

I have a hit ratio that certainly justifies having a local proxy, I would guess technical limitations at a RBC level are then pushed onto schools lower down in the chain.

[GrumbleDook]

Most of us who use firewalls would use in an isolation mode, one that segregates the school off from the MAn / WAN, whereas most of us actually have stuff in place to deal with things anyway with our router. It is fairly easy to setup port based ACLs and presuming you have your routing done correctly you should not need a firewall.

 

Of course, this is in an ideal world and presuming that you have up to date AV and Anti-Spyware, that all clients are secure and patched, you have an internal cache correctly configured and all pigs are fed and ready to fly.

 

If everyone followed the Standard Network Builds from RBCs there would be a lot less problems ... but also a lot less pushing the boundaries for tools for learning / teaching.

 

Getting the balance ... that is the fun bit.

[spc-rocket]

Most of us who use firewalls would use in an isolation mode, one that segregates the school off from the MAn / WAN, whereas most of us actually have stuff in place to deal with things anyway with our router. It is fairly easy to setup port based ACLs and presuming you have your routing done correctly you should not need a firewall.

 

Of course, this is in an ideal world and presuming that you have up to date AV and Anti-Spyware, that all clients are secure and patched, you have an internal cache correctly configured and all pigs are fed and ready to fly.

 

If everyone followed the Standard Network Builds from RBCs there would be a lot less problems ... but also a lot less pushing the boundaries for tools for learning / teaching.

 

Getting the balance ... that is the fun bit.

 

@Tony

 

I agree with the SNB and how it can be made to work but the problem with the central filtering is that many websites will be denied (rightly of course) but the request is still fed through the wan link only to be denied again taking up bandwidth that could be used for other things. Kids will be kids and will try to bypass and access sites that are filtered and when you get this situation from a lot of schools where the requests are being made but are denied sometime this could overwhlem the webfilter and unfortuantely this used to happen regurarely with our RBC filter. This would then go into block everything mode until the box was reset or rebooted. Clearly there are software and HW that will handle more connections etc but the idea of having a report of who accessed what and ability to give users different filtering levels based on their identity is highly required.

 

Also the portal where users sign on could be down so there might be disruption to accessing the internet and again the same logic applies about many connections that will be required to be handled by the portal, bandwidth used i.e. we have 300-400 stations (out of over 800) that access the internet at the same time. In the above scenario there would be a need to have more bandwidth available and the 10mb connection may not be enough.

 

I not having a bo at the RBCs or the idea of RBCs, i think its great but there should not be an expectation that everyone will adhere to the SNB because for some schools (larger ones) that have different requirements will find that SNB put too much restrictions or does not fulfill their needs.

 

Ash.