Using a router server to filter the Internet?

[Charles Steinkuehler]

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* owner-kclug at kclug.org on behalf of Leo J Mauler
> *Sent:* Mon 5/3/2004 10:36 PM
> *To:* kclug at kclug.org
> *Subject:* Using a router server to filter the Internet?
<snip>
> Money is a bit of an issue, and traditional software solutions are
> somewhat costly, so I was thinking of a slightly different route:
> segmenting the network and handling the filtering on the router.  I've
> heard of employers doing this, so its clearly possible to do.  There are
> spare PCs to use as Linux-based routers.
> 
> However, what exactly are they doing to accomplish the server-side
> Internet filtering?  I'm presuming some sort of HTTP proxy and IP address
> blocking, but are there other elements to use as well?

You can configure your router to send all web traffic to a proxy (either 
local to the router/firewall or on a seperate machine), then run 
something like squidguard:
http://www.squidguard.org/intro/

Of course, the blocking part is easy...the hard part is keeping the list 
of what to block reasonably up to date.  There are several places around 
the 'net where you can download blocking lists to use with squidguard 
(including the squidguard site itself):
http://www.squidguard.org/blacklist/

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net