Content Filtering - OpenDNS

[bewlay51]

Has anybody had any experience of OpenDNS as a content filter system? It looks good to me, but as I understand it is not free for over a certain amount of users. Is it worth taking a look at? Is there any other “open source” content filters out there? Any comments please

 

Thanks,

 

John

2010IT - School ICT Suites and Servers

[rush_tech]

You could have a look at Dansguardian

[Michael]

Just taken a look at the OpenDNS website. It used to be totally free, but to be honest the features/prices are totally wrong. How on earth did going from $9.95 for one package to $2000 for another seem a good idea?

 

For $2000 I'd expect much better features than they're offering...

[allisonopendns]

I work for OpenDNS and thought it would be helpful to jump in and clarify. You can still use OpenDNS for free... the Basic version will always be free. In addition we now also have OpenDNS Deluxe and OpenDNS Enterprise. A feature by feature breakdown is available on opendns.com / start.

 

The $9.95/year pricing is for OpenDNS Deluxe for a household. Pricing is different for businesses ($5/per user/per year), and different still for schools. Many school districts, however, have elected to go with Enterprise, for which special education pricing is available.

[tom_newton]

You might want to fix your profile link and the link in your post, allison. Just some friendly advice from the competition (Met some of your folk at RSA a few years ago - I'm afraid I ditched John(?)'s card from my wallet when google DNS gave me a nameserver I could remember without!).

 

Can I ask a quick question - how do you deal with people just putting in an IP address?

[KK20]

I would say that OpenDNS for schools is quite limited - unless you operate a pure whitelist operation (even so the free version will run out of domains quite quickly).

 

Personally I would look at Dansguardian and squid. Its free, can get you going and if you arent as geeky or tech savvy as other people then there are commercial grade alternatives (such as smoothwall) There are cheap blocklists available for DG and it is fairly intuitive.

[ind1ekid]

I'm afraid I ditched John(?)'s card from my wallet when google DNS gave me a nameserver I could remember without!).

OpenDNS does offer alot more than google offer at the moment. The human mind is certainly capable of remembering an IP address that isnt 8.8.8.8 im sure.

 

OpenDNS Blog - A response to googles Public DNS Offering

 

OpenDNS is an ideal solution for the home users with young children. Maybe not as much in school environment due to alternatives, as previously said, if you can get squid/dansguardian up and running your onto a winner at no cost.

[tom_newton]

OpenDNS does offer alot more than google offer at the moment. The human mind is certainly capable of remembering an IP address that isnt 8.8.8.8 im sure.

 

 

You underestimate my ability to forget. My wife would put you straight on that one Wife also complains about the size of my wallet, and specifically the business cards:currency ratio, so ditching the business card was a win there too

 

I figure a DNS server is about the only thing you *can't* google for (well, if you're on a fixed IP and have forgotten it you are also probably SOL) so I am willing to make room for that small bit of information!

[OutToLunch]

It makes a very good backup rather than first line filtering solution. Still running the old free version of Censornet here - Smoothwall Express or some other more up to date solution has been on the to do list for far too long and doesn't seem to ever get closer to the top. As a backup to the content filtering and domain blocking of Censornet we run on OpenDNS with a number of the filtering categories selected - this means if anything sneaky dodges the local filter through not mentioning content/not having a dodgy name/being a random proxy site it is generally picked up and blocked at the OpenDNS level instead. I wouldn't rely on it as my primary filtering solution but it's perfect when used as we have it.