[K12OSN] Best solution for Internet access, control, and caching?

j.w. thomas jthomas at bittware.com
Fri Dec 12 01:09:24 UTC 2008


Joseph Bishay wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> How is everyone doing?
> 
> We're revamping our Church network here and a new situation has
> arisen.  Our network has both an k12LTSP server handling around 20
> clients, and several standalone Window and Linux machines that need
> Internet access as well.  We have a DSL connection with 5 static IPs.
> 
> I've read about Squid/Squidguard, IPCop, Dansguard, smoothwall, and
> lots of other stuff and it's all starting to blur.  I'd like to have
> the following:
> 
> 1) Ability to log who (client or standalone) accessed what
> 2) Ability to block elementary students from accessing inappropriate sites
> 3) Ability to allow certain computers unfettered access to any site
> 4) A caching mechanism so common sites the whole class runs can be
> faster (is this needed? At some point is used to be all the rave)
> 5) Ability for someone remotely to connect to the LTSP server or one
> of the the other Linux machines for administration.
> 6) Do my laundry :)
> 
> I know some products do some things but I don't understand what does
> what.  I understand this would have to reside on a standalone machine
> and I have plenty of older computers that I can slap a couple of
> network cards into so that side is no problem.
> 
> I look forward to your always-useful feedback.
> 
> Thank you
> Joseph
> 
> _______________________________________________
> K12OSN mailing list
> K12OSN at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
> 

Squid is a web caching proxy, so that will handle requirement 4. 
Squidguard in a squid plugin that will do filtering (Dans guardian is 
another filter, but I haven't used it).  squidguard is highly 
configurable, and it will log who goes where.  You can specify time 
periods, ip addresses, usernames (though I never tried that).  It 
operated off blacklists and whitelists.  I really liked it and am 
getting ready to deploy it on my network.  When I get time.

For remote admin, use ssh.  squid and squidguard can both be managed 
from the command line, so ssh will work just fine for that.

-- 
Jim Thomas            Principal Applications Engineer  Bittware, Inc
jthomas at bittware.com  http://www.bittware.com    (603) 226-0404 x536
I'm a man.  But I can change.  If I have to.  I guess.  - Red Green




More information about the K12OSN mailing list