blocking internet access in studios - help :)

[Camillei]

Hi guys

I seem to have a little problem with Internet access in my studios, or rather blocking internet access. Here's the deal:

For obvious reasons any studio boss wants the models to focus on work - thats why internet i usually blocked, with some exceptions of course. The problem I have right now is that the software I used is not suitable anymore, due to the fact that I started working with new sites which have their chat interface hmm.. complicated to say the least.

I was wondering if anyone has any hints on what software to use, as I've already tried a dozen firewalls and none of them seem to do the job. It should have general Internet blocking option, with exclusions for sites, IP's and IP wildcards. From the popular firewalls Zonealarm seemed to be the closest one to ideal, although it wouldnt allow Java to refresh the frame where the model types in chat - so no good there.

Or if any studio boss reads this and has/had the same problem - how do you treat it?

[secret]

Yeah ZoneAlarm is a nice program for home use, but it takes up too many resources and can cause problems with internet accesss on occasions. What kind of sites/programs do you want to block?.

There is a really easy way of blocking sites and the majority of your models won't have any idea how to bypass it. It doesn't involve third party software either, so your PC's won't be grinding to a halt. However it would only work if you don't need any access to the sites you want to ban. I was going to post it here but then realised one of your models might read this site so check your PM.

Hope it helps

[BuckeyeTX]

Using firewalls and proxies can be tricky for the non-technical studio owners - especially when it comes to using cam sites that require a client installation. If your concern is just web browsing, the easiest solution I have found is to use Internet Explorer's built-in website blocker.

In Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options and choose the Content tab. At the top you will see Content Advisor. You'll be asked to choose a password. Choose Level 0 the lowest setting and under General uncheck "Users can see sites with so rating". Then add your sites under Approved Sites using wildcard characters like *.website.com.

The drawback is that you have to do a dry run to be sure you get all the sites you need and you have to set it up seperately on each computer (same with Zone Alarm). If you are really technical, install a domain server and use Active Directory Group Policy to manage all this.

But it's free and it's free and it's built into IE so why not use it.

[elsydeon]

another way is to have the model's computers go through a gateway (not the famous cow computer company, but a type of server), this makes it so they cant get around it as easily, is invisible to them, and should work with whatever software you use

those $50 or so internet routers should do wonders, do some research since some have more configurable firewalls than others; then if you need more computers than it has ports, use switches or hubs to multiply the ports

[VCS]

Camillei, I would suggest you use Microsoft's Shared Computer Toolkit. It will do all this and much more...