Monitor internet use

[JMB]

Hi everyone - can anyone using server 2008 R2 recommend a tool for monitoring internet use? I'm about try out Spector 360, but any suggestions would be brilliant. Thanks!

[Gongalong]

How is your Internet provided, and are you talking about monitoring by individual AD accounts, realtime monitoring, and/or overall usage?

 

We monitor in a variety of ways, using our content filtering appliance (a semi-ancient WS1000), and 3Com Device Manager on the specific port plumbed into our CC provided Internet connection.

[JMB]

Well...people log on to thick machines with AD logins, and the server then provides desktop short cuts, etc. Internet goes through a proxy provided by South West Grid for Learning. I've asked them about monitoring, and they can't do it. So really I need something that will monitor people's internet usage via their domain logins. It wouldn't be so bad if it reported on a PC by PC basis, or via mac address etc., as I could very easily tie those details to specific users.

[Gongalong]

I think you can only monitor at the point the traffic is routed through i.e. your proxy. I could be wrong though, and I'm sure folks will point out if I am

 

We have an internal proxy (our WS1000), so monitor at that point.

 

The alternative would be to setup an internal proxy that then connects to your current proxy. We've been looking at replacements for our WS1000, and that can be anything from something free and Linux-y e.g. pfSense, up to and beyond something like a Smoothwall appliance. They all have their pros and cons e.g. pfSense may not give you AD level reporting.

[localzuk]

You either want your own proxy device to do it, something like a Smoothwall box. Or, you could use something like Impero or Spector 360.

[JMB]

Thanks guys - am now waiting on call backs from a couple of the companies listed above, and will consider a trial of Spector 360 although it's so expensive I doubt it's a viable option for us.

[bwestlake]

impero is a really good piece of software, that enables you to restrict the students by their username and groups you put them in

[JMB]

I have high hopes for Impero! Can anyone give me a rough idea of costing ahead of them contacting me about a demo?

[localzuk]

I have high hopes for Impero! Can anyone give me a rough idea of costing ahead of them contacting me about a demo?

 

How big is your school? The pricing depends on that basically, also, they will give you a price quite quickly over the phone and don't do high pressure selling stuff, so its worth just giving them a call.

[JMB]

How big is your school? The pricing depends on that basically, also, they will give you a price quite quickly over the phone and don't do high pressure selling stuff, so its worth just giving them a call.

 

We're only quite little..28 PCs in total. Unless they go by AD accounts for the licencing, but even in that case we have 130 AD users, give or take, but of those I would imagine only 50% have ever actually logged into one of the PCs!

[localzuk]

We're only quite little..28 PCs in total. Unless they go by AD accounts for the licencing, but even in that case we have 130 AD users, give or take, but of those I would imagine only 50% have ever actually logged into one of the PCs!

 

Ah, yeah, I couldn't give you any indication with that sort of number of devices. We have 550 or so here, so the price will be very different.

 

As I say though, give them a call, they can give you a web demo of its capabilities, and set you up with a demo on your network.

[bwestlake]

i think if you dont go for a site licence (1000 machines) then its around about £11 per machine last time i checked

[Duke5A]

Squid works great, and it's free. I setup an internal Squid proxy last school year that authenticates against AD and records traffic usage by account name. Another free piece of software called SARG parses the logs every night into an easy to read webpage.