Bloxx web filter - Anyone used them?

mrbios · 29 Sep 2010 at 12:45

As per the title really, has anyone used them, would you recommend them, are they reliable, or are there any better alternatives to the same thing?

Interested in the Bloxx web filter and media filters (running in a school environment)

The guy i spoke to made them sound very good and lured me in to wanting it but i want more opinions on them, only had 2 other people giving opinions so far, both good but 2 isn't enough when the potential spend is over £10k

mrbios · 29 Sep 2010 at 13:35

We already run squid and squidguard but that's very different to what we're aiming for and to what they supply, what do you mean exactly?

mrbios · 29 Sep 2010 at 13:53

The £10k included the physical server it'll run on, installation, regular updates to blocking lists etc. The included media server was another physical box which would allow teachers to approve specific youtube videos for viewing by students (Youtube is currently blocked school wide to students due to the nature of a lot of the content on there)

the £10k is a per 3 years cost and the price drops + free hardware upgrade in the second 3 years.

Squid isn't appropriate for what we want, it does the job currently as we are using the local government provided internet connection and filtering on top of it and it must meet certain standards, we're looking to abandon the local government connection for something better but that means we need to sort out a much more comprehensive filtering system.

Admitedly the physical boxes they provide could be called overkill as we are almost fully virtualised here, but that said im not sure there is enough space left on our VM hosts to run both of them at the specs there saying.

mrbios · 29 Sep 2010 at 14:29

Thank you Little_Crow, we would be going for the TVT1250 box i think, we have 3 proxies but only 2 would be directed through the bloxx box, one proxy is for staff and the other for students at the moment with a 3rd proxy for us in the IT office (though im not sure we would entirely need to keep it setup this way if we go down this route, want to simplify it all as the setup is completely over complicated at the moment whilst also keeping it as secure as possible)

mrbios · 2 Oct 2010 at 11:07

forgot to mention that currently just over £9000 comes out of our budget for our current connection + filtering, this would would work out at £4600 a year for just the filtering (down to £3000 a year for the second 3 years), not sure how much our connection is going to cost yet but we're trying to work something out to save money over our current provider - though either way we'll be getting a LOT more control than we currently do which is a bonus.

So cost isn't as much of an issue as it seems really.