Hi all, At the school where I'm teaching we want to block certain sites (like facebook and Ikariam) so that our students can not access them. I know we can achieve this by using software like Net Nanny and thus controlling internet access. However, I was wondering whether there is a way we can block these addresses without having to install any software. We have tried to edit the c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file with no success. Our PCs run on windows 7 ultimate. Any help on the issue will be much appreciated. Thank you in advance :-)

Hi Entropia2421, You actually have some options such as the following Editting Hosts file: On windows7, by default you cannot modify the hosts file.you will have to go to the hosts file security property and give the logon users priviledge to write/modify the file. Other option is to use group policy. Using a Proxy server built on ISA/TMG Server. Install an ISA/TMG server and configure all PCs to access the internet via the proxy server. on the proxy use create rules that match your requirement and give access as needed. ISA/TMG will be effective if you running it in an Active directory environment. otherwise you will need to create rules based on IP address and ensure the student can't change their PCs IP address. Also, ensure your final router to the internet only permit your ISA/TMG server to the alone. Call your local MS Partner or office, you can get academic pricing for the IS/TMG which is cheap. Setting up dummy dns zone for the domains you want to block: configure the dns server used on the network with dummy zone for facebook and other restricted sites. the downside of this is all Pcs using the dns server will NOt be able to acess the restricted sites even at off hours. i will suggest you setup two dns server. one wth the dummy zones and configure the PCs you want to restrict with it as their prefer DNS server. Lastly, you can turn to the open source for help. check out IPcop or Monowall firewall. they are linux based and be ready for some nightmares. Wish you all the best and let us know how you were able to handle this. Toyin MCTS,MCPToyin OGUNMEFUN Network Infrastructure Engineer (MS Exch2k7 TS,MCSE,CCNA,DCSE) Mobile: +234-8034755579,7029085091 Email:ahmed_toyin@hotmail.com Web:http://toyinogunmefun.spaces.live.com

Hi Toyin, and thank you for your help.Eventually, I have used OpenDNS at: http://www.opendns.com. It seems to be working fine and doing what we really want it to do. However, I'm wondering how we could terminate the service in case we don't need it anymore since there is not an option for stopping the service on the OpenDNS dashboard ... Thank you anyway :-) EleniEntropia