Rob Keeling wrote:

I have been asked if I can set up some way of turning internet access on or off in individual computer areas.

The idea would be that teacher logs on to a page on our intranet, to enable/disable access for the lession.

I have looked at the documentation for squid guard, which looks like I can enable/disable the right bits and bobs, but I don`t know if I can edit the config files with a php script and things change without restarting squid/squidguard.

Does anyone run anything simalar?

Yup, we use CensorNet (www.censornet.com) which is a GPL project based on Debian. It allows us to "switch the internet on" (as the kids say) for lessons. We've set up each of our rooms on a separate profile that duplicates a week's timetable. The technicians set up the rooms for the day based on teacher's requests and it automatically switches on and off throughout the day. You can of course enable or disable access at shorter notice. The newer versions include a "manager" logon that would allow teachers to enable / disable access themselves. It's not as simple an interface as a "big red button", but they should be able to manage it with a little training. There is a £100 pa subscription for the Blacklist of websites, but if your filtering is already provided elsewhere, you wouldn't need this functionality. HTH, Tony

Tony Whitmore wrote:

Rob Keeling wrote:

...

I have been asked if I can set up some way of turning internet access on or off in individual computer areas.

The idea would be that teacher logs on to a page on our intranet, to enable/disable access for the lession.

I have looked at the documentation for squid guard, which looks like I can enable/disable the right bits and bobs, but I don`t know if I can edit the config files with a php script and things change without restarting squid/squidguard.

Does anyone run anything simalar?

Yup, we use CensorNet (www.censornet.com) which is a GPL project based on Debian. It allows us to "switch the internet on" (as the kids say) for lessons. We've set up each of our rooms on a separate profile that duplicates a week's timetable. The technicians set up the rooms for the day based on teacher's requests and it automatically switches on and off throughout the day. You can of course enable or disable access at shorter notice. The newer versions include a "manager" logon that would allow teachers to enable / disable access themselves. It's not as simple an interface as a "big red button", but they should be able to manage it with a little training.

Thanks for pointing this one out, I had looked ad censorNet, nice looking package, though our firewall filtering etc is all county supplied. I have installed squid & squidguard which might work, but it looks like I have to re-start squid to reload the settings. I think our it staff are after something that they can turn access on and off again every 10 mins during lessons without affecting other rooms. Any suggestions? Rob Keeling

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:50:24 +0100 Rob Keeling wrote:

I have been asked if I can set up some way of turning internet access on or off in individual computer areas.

<snip> We also use Censornet(v3.2) at our school. Because we also have county supplied filtering I set the censornet proxy to point at the county proxy and setup up a user 'squid' with password on our active directory userlist. All computers were allocated to a group based on rooms. We are then able to turn on or off the rooms or individual computers within the rooms by way of the denied access buttons by the side of each computer name. This is instantaneous. By giving the teachers access to Censornet through a passworded webpage they are able to control their own class access. Our system is to default to 'OFF' unless required. Regularly scanning through the statistics to see the top ten most popular sites allows me to pick up and blacklist anything the kids like to view!! hope this helps Rob Maltby

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