It does not require MNF, and while this was written to use DansGuardian on MNF, it will run on a variety of operating systems including any Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and even OS X (although at the time of this writing, the OS X support is alpha quality).īuilding DansGuardian is very straightforward.

It requires Squid for the web proxy, and it requires a web server like Apache. MNF also comes with squidGuard which is nice, but doesn't seem to be as flexible as DansGuardian when it comes to content filtering.ĭansGuardian has a few requirements. And the ability to use DansGuardian as a content filter. No reconfiguration of the LAN to point everything to a proxy. One way you can configure MNF is to use Squid as a transparent proxy, which is ideal. And by using a Linux-based firewall operating system, I get all the flexibility I want. While the end result may have been more expensive, you can't put a price on flexibility. Eventually it was this drawback that convinced me to sell it my daughter is only a year and a half and won't be surfing solo anytime soon.Īs a result, I took an unused desktop computer and installed MandrakeSoft's Multi-Network Firewall 8.2 on it, to replace the now removed firewall appliance. The other drawback to this particular appliance was that port forwarding didn't work. So if you're looking to keep your children from stumbling across some pornographic web pages, you have to get pretty creative to populate your word list. Unfortunately, this word list was something the end user had to enter in by hand.

The content filtering was extremely basic and was solely word-based. Without pointing any fingers, I had purchased a content filtering firewall appliance that promised content filtering and was sorely disappointed. These content filtering proxies are a boon to individuals with young children in the house, but many of them are extremely basic.

One feature many firewall appliances have been pushing recently is content filtering proxies, whether transparent or authenticated.

Nxfilter filtering was not enabled