Advice on Filtering please

[jgcracknell]

Hi

 

In our LEA we have a selection of filtering levels, but can either be on one or the other (no difference made between staff and students).

 

What I would like to do is be on a more open level of access, but put a box in the way e.g. Dansguardian which filters sites we deem not appropriate to students (but staff can still use) e.g. some YouTube content.

 

Any recommendations - due to lack of budgets/small high school (410 students) I want to do this as cheap and easily as possible. My idea is for AD to be setup to push staff straight to the main cache that we all have to go through, but students via another box to filter.

 

Thanks in advance for your time and advice

 

J.

[joegalliano]

Have a look at untangle

[jgcracknell]

Hi

 

Untangle looks very good - but it costs for dynamic web blocking. I see comments online about Smoothwall express and Dansguardian running together on the same box with DG doing dynamic filtering and using urlblacklist.com

 

I'd just like to have the dynamic web blocking as well for added protection - or am I asking too much?

[Rydra]

I am looking at doing something similar for my primary school. The high school I came from used the RM Smartcache2, and it has it's problem (It's a "Block" rule or an "Allow" rule that overrides all "Block" rules... so say you want to allow all "bbc.co.uk", it has a HUGE flaw, as you can then goto google, search for "hot sex" -"bbc.co.uk" (for those who don't know, minus says "search for THIS excluding links relating to "THAT".)

 

But it allows direct control through your AD of who can get at what, connects to a central database for sites to block in different groupings (Adult/mature, social networking/chat, technical, email etc etc) and you can control everything from individuals, to year groups, to whole usertypes, everyone, and includes time management; say you want the staff to be able to only access facebook etc during break/lunch/before+after school? All done through this.

 

It was all written in linux, and no doubt is a modded version of someone elses software, and I would bet there is a solution out that that isn't affected by the "RM sucks" bug that all RM products get plagued with!

[ricki]

Hi

 

I would get a 2.8 cpu old box with a couple of gig of ram and a new hard drive and install a lamp verion of linux like ubuntu.

 

Dont forget to fix the ip of the computer.

 

Now install and configure squid, dansguardian, webmin, sarg, etc and then download the block lists that you need and install them into dansguardian. Customize the block page to suit you school and test.

 

Once it is working then direct the students to the danguardian box which will double filter the internet for the students.

 

Richard

Edited January 29, 2010 by ricki

[tom_newton]

If you want the DIY route, it can augment filtering by applying selective white and blacklists. I would advocate starting with ubuntu/squid for that route as a starter, dansguardian is harder work. You have a pretty decent idea on setup there - though make sure the kids can't use firefox on a usb stick to subvert it and use whichever proxy is less restricted. unrestricting an IP for a squid box, and putting auth on that may be bit more secure. NTLM - seamless but harder, proxy auth - pop-up but easier.

 

 

If you want to look at a commercial solution - let me know. Otherwise, I will give what useful tips I can.