Re: Content filtering for a home network

Colin Brough wrote:
Like lots of folks, I now have a small network at home - cable modem
into a Belkin wireless router, with a couple of machines in the
network. I also have 3 (growing) kids. At some point we'll want to let
them have access to the net, and I'm thinking ahead to the kinds of
filtering I'd like to be able to do - perhaps when 3rd and 4th
machines get added to the network...

I'm probably thinking of putting a dedicated box between the cable
modem and the router, with decent firewall and content filtering
capabilities.

As it will be sitting by my desk, size and power considertations are
somewhat important.

- do any of the plethora of routers available off the shelf offer
content filtering?

- what are folk using on Linux (or BSD or whatever) to do this kind
of thing? SquidGuard? DansGuardian? (Those are just names I've come
across, but I've used neither...)

- are there off-the-shelf mini-ITX products that would suit, without
being wildly expensive? (with or without the content filtering
software already installed)

Cheers

Colin

I am in a similar situation with two kids regularly surfing the net. I have an old compaq acting as content filter using Dansguardian that works well. I've used the IPCop (ipcop.org) firewall build - Dansguardian is available as an addon, very easy to install.

From what I have seen routers that claim to do filtering only seem to do simple pattern matches on URLs whereas Dansguardian scores the content of pages based on actual content. This behaviour can be tuned to suit, and certain sites explicity white or black listed.
The one area I am concerned about is IM as Dansguardian does nothing to filter this. I have installed Cyberpatrol for other people and this takes care of not only surfing but email, newsgroups and IM. It is however an annual charge per PC.

B.
.

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