DNS based web filtering for a children's non-profit

[brons2]

I do volunteer work at a local children's non-profit that has a computer lab and office computers. While I am used to using the robust Websense filtering tool at my paying job, the non-profit does not have the resources to procure such an expensive solution.

I happened upon an alternative to network based filtering on a firewall or proxy: DNS based filering through OpenDNS. http://www.opendns.com. Basically you point your forward DNS lookups to them, and then if it sees a DNS lookup that is on your block list, it redirects the attempt to a block page at their site. I am trying it out on my home network and it seems to work really good.

I know that I won't be able to produce the sort of granular policies and comprehensive reports that I can with Websense, but just to get this non-profit off the ground with some basic free filtering would be fantastic. I would love to be able to block

Are there any drawbacks to this approach other than the aspect of less flexibility in custom policies and reporting as already noted?

Shameless plug: check us out at http://www.rivercityyouth.org

[edit] Fixed RCYF url

 

[marley1]

lots of people use that works good, could use that in conjuction with a linux based UTM firewall, untangle + opendns would work well =)

 

[Deleted member 12106]

I use openDNS+untangle at my house currently. Prior to that, I was using openDNS+PFsense at home.

I think you might want to try untalge with the webfilter, or, possibly endian. I have not tried endian yet.

 

[brons2]

Thanks for the info, Untangle looks pretty neat. Our network has less than 50 workstations, so the minimum configs should work. I'll have to dig out some hardware and see what I have around.