Best solution for web blocking?

Velvis

Well-Known Member
Reaction score
47
Location
Medfield, MA
Client wants to block job hunting websites. Whats the best solution for an office of about 20 computers?

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
You can do that through the routers content filtering. For most, the content filter is found under 'firewall', 'basic rules' or 'content' and from there you'll be able to locate the URL content filer. Simply add the URLs to the content filter. This will block sites at the source.

You can also do this with OpenDNS. You and your client can probably learn enough of OpenDNS in a few minutes to do this, and as a side effect they'll significantly improve the overall security and quite possibly their reliability and speed. Alternatively, depending on the router they have, you could flash it with dd-wrt (or CeroWRT or tomato). This requires significantly more technical skill, but will result in a much more powerful tool. (and if their router doesn't support one of these, one can be bought that does for under $100).
 
If they want to leave that badly I probably wouldn't want them as employees.

Is the client concerned they are looking for a new job or that it's being done on company time?

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk
 
Content control is important, and you don't want to know how many employees, even happy ones, will waste buckets of time on job hunting websites while at work.

Personally, I prefer Untangle for this task, because if you're going to do content control you may as well go all the way and gain the best anti-malware defense possible right now. OpenDNS is a less expensive option, but it's not as easy to work with.
 
Check out dnsfilter.com as a cheaper (and less feature rich) alternative to open dns.

I just took a peek, and unless they give MASSIVE discounts to resellers they're actually substantially more expensive than what I pay for OpenDNS.
 
I just took a peek, and unless they give MASSIVE discounts to resellers they're actually substantially more expensive than what I pay for OpenDNS.

Last I checked OpenDNS is over $2 per endpoint each month (unless you are a grandfathered plan). DNSFilter lets you choose per site filtering or per user. Per site is $5/month for up to 200K queries, or $1/month per each user.

Their feature set is not as good or mature as OpenDNS, and their endpoint agent is still in beta, but for good DNS and web filtering it is very good, especially for the price. They are somewhat new and have been making good progress on their roadmap.
 
Blocking job hunting is not a rare thing for businesses, as well as personal email, social media, shopping, vacation planning, etc. Shouldn't be a shock that business owners want to keep employees working, not slacking off.

I prefer to get this done at the firewall level, the edge appliance, and for us..that''s Untangle.
 
Last I checked OpenDNS is over $2 per endpoint each month (unless you are a grandfathered plan). DNSFilter lets you choose per site filtering or per user. Per site is $5/month for up to 200K queries, or $1/month per each user.

Their feature set is not as good or mature as OpenDNS, and their endpoint agent is still in beta, but for good DNS and web filtering it is very good, especially for the price. They are somewhat new and have been making good progress on their roadmap.

Yeah the site isn't behaving the same now, now I see a user count of 32, one network costs $8.00 / month, $96 / year. OpenDNS for that site is about $500 a year. Not sure what my browser was doing to me, or what I did to get that screwed up.
 
Back
Top