How can I 'white list' web sites that my LAN users may visit?

Question

All of the wired and wireless users of my peer-to-peer file and print sharing LAN (no servers) share one connection to the Internet through a Linksys router and a DSL modem. All users are using one flavor or another of Windows XP and IE6 ... no IE7. There are only a few business-related places I want my employees to be able to go on the Internet from my network. There are far too many places that I don't want users to go to try to black-list them all. Can someone recommend a resonably priced hardware or software (or combination) solution to provide a 'white list' of places that they can go? I'm fine with manually maintaining a list in an appliance or in software.

Answer 1

Try the D-Link SecureSpot! You can select catorgies that your USERS can visit!

Note: The D-Link SecureSpot subscription is 80.00 per year

Answer 2

If you're up to getting into setting up a Linux appliance on a spare PC, have a look at IPCop. http://www.ipcop.org

There are add-ons that you can use to control internet access, have a look at them at http://firewalladdons.sourceforge.net/

The PC will need to have 2 NICs in it -- and I'd recommend mainstream brands like 3Com or Intel -- but it's not too hard to set up. You'll use it in place of the linksys router so you'll need to get a switch to replace the router -- or you could just use the switch ports on the router though that's less than ideal. Any PC that can run pretty much any version of Windows will suffice, it doesn't have to be anything new and fancy.

Answer 3

Check the Linksys website to see if this is possible in the router. Sometimes you can BLOCK all and only allow certain websites.

Another idea is to make the DNS server on all the PCs 127.0.0.1.

Then the websites you want them to access. Create a HOSTS File. You can google/yahoo for "hosts file in windows xp" or "hosts file in windows 2000" and it will tell you how to do this.