I find it necessary to set up some kind of internet access limits on my home network and I am looking into firewall options. Probably the simplest is to install a firewall router with which I can filter URLs and limit daily access. Another option is to set up a computer with software as the firewall/gateway. (A) I don't know how to do this, and (B) I don't know how long it would take to figure it out. I'd like to get this working quickly.

I currently have an iMac, a WindowsXP Homey, a Slackware desktop, and an old Compaq notebook which is also running Slackware. These all share a DSL connection through a Linksys router.

I want to be able to filter certain URLs and to limit internet access on the iMac and Windows XP to a certain time-period so that my kids won't waste so much time. I'd like to be able to do this network-wide and not on the individual computers.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Kent

Sounds to me like you're not talking about a firewall so much as a bandwidth monitor / filter. I guess you're thinking about something like Net Nanny or the such. There are some free opensource packages over at www.freshmeat.net like http://freshmeat.net/projects/dansgu...152%2C43%2C862

As for the 'firewall' aspect of your setup, that linksys router will do a good job of blocking nefarious incoming attacks if you don't forward ports to any of the computers you mentioned.

di11rod

Software like NetNanny that sits on the host PC isn't that useful though, because if the person using the computer is sufficiently clever they can just disable it. I know when I was using IPCop a lot of people on the mailing list were asking how (and getting answers) to setup IPCop with Dan's Guardian to filter URLs and also using cron jobs to turn on/off Internet access to certain IPs or MAC addrs on the internal network.

You might try the IPCop mailing list archieves (bound to be in Google results) and also check out the Dan's Guardian extention to Squid Proxy.