Hi,

I have 2 daughters that are starting to surf on the internet, and I want to use some kind of parental control. However, I have many PCs in the house, and so I want to avoid installing and managing software on each machine. I want a centralized solution.

I can get around Linux pretty well...

Here are my specs :

- Many Windows PCs in the house, each having multiple users. I also have a couple of Linux servers, on which services that scrape the web work day and night. All machines are on the same subnet, and connected to an ADSL router.
- I want each PC user to have its own set of rules. For some users (me, my wife), I want totally open access, from all computers. For guest accounts, and my kids accounts, I want to be able to filter the usual (porn, drugs, etc...), and also be able, if possible, to control when they can get access to the net. For my Linux Server processes, I obviously want open access.
- I don't want to have to manually maintain the blacklist of web sites... Is there an online service that does that ? Is it free ?
- I want centralized administration, and if possible, web-based.

I don't have a problem buying another machine to play the role of the gatekeeper... if that's what it takes.

I've stumbled upon "Squid" while searching, but I want to make sure this is the right tool. Would it handle all my specs ?

Thanks.

One solution is to have your router use OpenDNS for it's DNS, and set up OpenDNS to filter out questionable sites.

One Solution could be DansGuardian. It works for me and my children

Cheers,
Tom

More specific questions :

- Does DansGuardian support schedules, e.g. I don't want my kids to access the internet in the morning before school, can I say I want access for my kids to be available Mon-Fri from 4pm to 8pm, and saturdays and sundays all day, and for me and my wife open access all the time ?

- How does DansGuardian identify users ? Is it the username and password entered at the clients' Windows login that is used for all requests, or is it that the first web page requested at each session pops up a login dialog ?

I think it would. We use it at work. You can do schedules, cache histories, restrict by IP, addresses; it might be more manual work than you want though, and I'm not sure about the content filtering. I don't think remote admin is a problem.

-That's the part I'm not sure about.

Edit: looks like several users listed on the DansGuardian site use squid as the proxy in conjuction with DanGuardian.