What content filtering do you use?

[BStevens]

Morning all,

 

We currently use RM Smart Cache and we are looking for a new system.

 

Can I ask what people use at current and how you are finiding it?

 

We have some 1000 PCs.

 

Thanks

 

Ben

[Brpilot99]

Weve installed a Censornet side by side server (one of the baby HP's) and it works very well ... love the inteligent filtering aspect ... Teachers get Youtube for example without the not so good videos ..

[arron]

We use smoothwall here, ties in with Active Directory and the mac equivalent with ease so is able to do filtering based on groups. It has a very good reporting side to it. It has time slots, quotas and computer name/ip address based locations so you can filter based on a room.

[twin--turbo]

Websens, but we are planning the future replacement (LONG WAY OFF).. Probably go to A Smoothie.

 

Rob

[sonofsanta]

Predicting many "Smoothwall!" responses in this thread.

 

Smoothwall!

 

So very flexible when compared to RM (how I hated SmartCache) and constantly getting new features. Sterling support as well. Three thumbs up.*

 

*I'm from Lincolnshire, it's how we roll.

Edited November 5, 2012 by sonofsanta

[HarryMonkey]

Another thumbs up for Smoothwall. So glad to see the back of Smartcache.

[dave.81]

Currently use smoothwall. Although did demo censornet not that long ago and was very impressed by that as long as you dont need the filter to be firewall as well.

[MYK-IT]

Smoothwall UTM-1000 appliances here and never looked back!

 

Previously RM SMART Cache.

[AJWhite1970]

Dansguardian with squid and winbind on an Ubuntu server = free

 

We use it here with 1000 students and have no problems with performance at all

[mdench]

Smoothwall with 900ish pcs + 30 macs, 1500 students and quite a few BYOD using the SSL login page. Works brilliantly can't fault it atm

[arron]

Currently use smoothwall. Although did demo censornet not that long ago and was very impressed by that as long as you dont need the filter to be firewall as well.

 

The UTM will firewall and IDS + IPS good enough. Seen the odd virus blocked by it to, got a UTM 1000 here.

[BStevens]

Thanks all for your responses.

 

For those using Smoothwall which products are you using?

 

Web Security

Web Filtering

Web Unified threat management

 

And do you have a software / hardware option.

 

We have a firewall solution and would not require caching.

[arron]

UTM 1000 with a hardware box from smoothwall. We used hyper-v for our trial, had to be configured in a very certain way for it to work though.

[Soulfish]

Smoothwall here. 2 x SWG-1200 hardware units (it's there filtering only option), although I've also run it as both a VM and on my own hardware before without issue. Lovely and easy to use

[tom_newton]

Thanks for the vote of support there chaps, much appreciated Sitting in a hotel room in soton after a day with our dev team, it is good to see that our hard work doesn't go unnoticed.

[cpjitservices]

Dansguardian with squid and winbind on an Ubuntu server = free

 

We use it here with 1000 students and have no problems with performance at all

 

Same but that server dies, so I am now using the built in web filtering in Sophos Endpoint - Not very good but will temporarily do the job until I get my DG Box back up again.

[caffrey]

thumbs up here for schoolguardian too

[Quackers]

Fortinet 200B UTM

[techdave]

We have been using Smoothwall for 18 months now in a failover pair. It took the company six months to get the system working correctly due to bugs in the software.

 

We have found it to be quite unstable within an Enterprise environment and their support is wholly inadequate - telephone support is never answered and all queries logged though the support web portal are all marked low priority. The most recent issue was logged two weeks ago - not picked up and has resulted in a system failure.

 

I would not recommend then, which is a shame as the featureset of the UTM is good. The support is awful if you actually have a problem or want to provide a high level of up time for your users.

 

Checkout Watchguard, or Vyatta.

[arron]

I am surprised that it took 6 months.. got it working within 2 weeks here with just one call to them to find a setting. We've found there phone support to be quick.. they even stayed on the phone for 10 mins while we sorted a different problem out, however i have seen the thing you said about there support portal, ive been answered on here by smoothwall within a day while ive been waiting for around a week now on there support portal and still havent got an answer.

[Edu-IT]

We have been using Smoothwall for 18 months now in a failover pair. It took the company six months to get the system working correctly due to bugs in the software.

 

We have found it to be quite unstable within an Enterprise environment and their support is wholly inadequate - telephone support is never answered and all queries logged though the support web portal are all marked low priority. The most recent issue was logged two weeks ago - not picked up and has resulted in a system failure.

 

I would not recommend then, which is a shame as the featureset of the UTM is good. The support is awful if you actually have a problem or want to provide a high level of up time for your users.

 

Checkout Watchguard, or Vyatta.

 

That's a shame to hear and definately doesn't seem to be the general consensus...

[glennda]

Dansguardian with squid and winbind on an Ubuntu server = free

 

We use it here with 1000 students and have no problems with performance at all

 

Dansguardian and Squid is what Smoothwall was based around. The Technical Director is Daniel hence the name dansguardian.

 

Although having run both Smoothwall have done a hell of a lot to it now and have to say its ruddy brilliant. Along with the firewall implementations too.

[daveyboy]

You can tell how good it is by how much the students hate it.........

 

Support has been excellent.......top stuff.

[john]

Another happy Smoothwall user here, one of the best investment I've made (it sits alongside Juniper Network and Ruckus Wireless) great product and a great team behind it who know what schools want and how things go for us. We use the UTM-1000 and also have BYOD and its great no complaints that is isn't working well for me at all.

[john]

We have been using Smoothwall for 18 months now in a failover pair. It took the company six months to get the system working correctly due to bugs in the software.

 

We have found it to be quite unstable within an Enterprise environment and their support is wholly inadequate - telephone support is never answered and all queries logged though the support web portal are all marked low priority. The most recent issue was logged two weeks ago - not picked up and has resulted in a system failure.

 

I would not recommend then, which is a shame as the featureset of the UTM is good. The support is awful if you actually have a problem or want to provide a high level of up time for your users.

 

Checkout Watchguard, or Vyatta.

 

That sounds very out of sorts for them, never had issues with phone or web support before and when waiting a call back it is usually within an hour unless I say I'm out call between X and Y so very unusual.

 

Perhaps worth sending @tom_newton a PM to get him to look into this as this isn't the support we know of.