Blocking websites without a proxy?

[dany2010]

Hi,

 

We currently use AB Tutor to block websites but this takes ages to roll out the banned websites to computers.

 

The obvious answer would be to stick in a proxy but our network spans over five sites so each site would need its own proxy which would work out expensive. One proxy would work but the site containing the proxy would be bombarded with data.

 

Is there a piece of server based software that rolls out banned websites when the computer starts so internet data can still go from computer to the WWW without going cross site first?

 

Many thanks

Edited October 18, 2012 by dany2010

[Guest Guest]

Make DNS records for each website which point to 127.0.0.1.

[plexer]

OpenDNS Business Solutions

 

Ben

[Michael]

Modify the HOSTS file on each PC

[pete]

Hi,

 

We currently use AB Tutor to block websites but this takes ages to roll out the banned websites to computers.

 

The obvious answer would be to stick in a proxy but our network spans over five sites so each site would need its own proxy which would work out expensive. One proxy would work but the site containing the proxy would be bombarded with data.

 

Is there a piece of server based software that rolls out banned websites when the computer starts so internet data can still go from computer to the WWW without going cross site first?

 

Many thanks

 

How big is each site? A certain popular product is licensed per user (unsure what the minimum is) and it costs exactly the same to have 600 people on one site as it does to have 3 sites of 200 people. You can also chain them together for unified configs.

[dany2010]

Sounds good Pete. Could you pm or post the product?

 

We have 500 users over the five sites. One of the sites only has about 20 users.

 

Have had a look at smoothwall but its hardware based which i dont think the manager would agree on.

 

edit. Can open DNS be used alongside Windows server DNS?

 

Sorry another update,

 

Our DNS and DC servers are located at one site.

Edited October 18, 2012 by dany2010

[pete]

Sounds good Pete. Could you pm or post the product?

 

We have 500 users over the five sites. One of the sites only has about 20 users.

 

Have had a look at smoothwall but its hardware based which i dont think the manager would agree on.

 

It's SW I'm referring too. You buy your licenses and then they send you a link to an .iso. While they do sell hardware boxes, I think most people here sorted out the hardware themselves. For 20 users you don't need anything fancy - a spare desktop would do. A HP Microserver would probably work so long as you weren't using AV scanning. Poke @tom_newton for supported configs.

 

For OpenDNS, you'd set the OpenDNS servers as forwarders for your dns servers. Your internal servers would handle DNS requests from clients, they'd simply forward requests for things they didn't know to OpenDNS.

 

Explain how your sites are linked, how much intersite bandwidth is there and how much traffic flows over those links currently.

Edited October 18, 2012 by pete

[plexer]

You could also use the new dashboard to integrate multi site smoothies into one management console.

 

Ben

[dany2010]

Many thanks all,

 

Just gave them a call and they are sending over a price and a demo.

 

Lets hope all is good.

[RTFM]

We had a demo from sonicwall yesterday and you can control a multi site environment from a single dashboard with them

[Duke5A]

Squid can do just what you need for free. I'm in a six site school district with 4,000 students and all their traffic goes through a single proxy sitting in a VM setup with two virtual processors and 1GB of RAM. You would be surprised at how little the hardware requirements are for proxy servers.

[dany2010]

Just had the quote through from smoothwall and it would come to over £10,000.

 

That more than a third of our yearly budget so won't be going with them.

 

Will take a look at squid. Thanks Duke

[Quackers]

A Fortigate 200B ? about £3000 to buy then £1000 a year for the filtering sub.