Wednesday, July 01, 2009

A cheap alternative to Websense


There's sometimes issues where you need to filter or block the Internet access at home, school or in special environments such as a church. There are solutions but many of them cost a subscription fee or their prices are beyond normal affordable prices. What can you do when the client is looking for something that is free or of little cost?

This where you can use a service from OpenDNS, which blocks or allows custom websites depending upon your requirements. The cost of this service is free and open to home user including small businesses, not sure if this is ok for large businesses you will need to check before implementing.

So how does this work? It's simple!

Basically you setup you computer or router and change the DNS address from your ISP to OpenDNS's DNS servers, 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. From there you create an account on OpenDNS to choose what you would like to filter or not. You can choose various options such as adult content, gambling, or chat sites, even steaming video like YouTube. It's that simple.

In the case you need to open or allow a certain site, or a site that is not included you can manually add sites as needed. It's great for a church Internet computer that you do not want people accessing porn sites, it's also great for a kids computer where you want to block social networking sites for their safety.

I'll report back how well this works out after I try this at home.

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