FreeBSD gateway sharing Telewest cable modem - anyone?

[Mark Hughes]

> >Email proxying - I want to download email from a number of different
email
> >accounts through POP,
>
> fetchmail is the tool for this job, with qpopper for reading mail.

yup, I've got fetchmail installed on my box now and am playing with it -
seems to be what I was looking for. Will take a look at qpopper later.

> >Web filtering - prob going to use squid+squidguard - anyone using these?
>
> I've used Squid a lot - it works extremely well. I have one box out there
> that has a P-III/500 with 512MB ram and 3 x 9GB SCSI disks that serves
> 1.5 million objects per day without problem.
>
> Dunno about squidguard.

OK thanks, that's eased my spec-fears over running squid.

> > Basically one of the windows boxes is
> >in an 11yr olds room, and this needs to have it's web access filtered to
> >remove anything and everything even slightly dodgy.
> >[...] Opinions anyone?

> The only effective control on a child's Internet access is to watch over
> their shoulder while they are doing it.  Have their Internet access
> limited to a PC in the living room when a parent is present, that'll
avoid
> any problems with accessing dodgy content.

Indeed, but I want to be able to play unreal tournament against him, which
means he needs to have the internet accessible from his computer :-)

I know the limits of his knowledge and while I'm sure he's still learning
by the time he's learnt enough stuff to work out a way around it, he'll be
old enough to cope with what he may find. Just basically want to block
things which could come up by accident - searching for the name of a game
on google, ending up on some warez site with hardcore porn popups - that
sort of thing.

I'm sure if he really wants to get at stuff he shouldn't do, he will find a
way (going to one of the other workstations while my parents are out and
using the unfiltered net access on that, for example). But in the mean
time, we just want to protect him from accidentally stumbling across things
on his own computer, if you see what I mean.

> Again this is only my opinion, others might believe the hype of the
> net-nanny software vendors and entrust the moral welfare of their
children
> to some software and a belief that they can stay one step ahead ;-)

No, normally I would totally agree with this - we're just trying to put in
a little front line defence against him accidentally wondering into the
wrong place. I agree with the point that kids should be supervised on the
net, but there does come a time where you have to trust them and give them
a little freedom. With the emphasis, in the first instance, being on the
"little".

All that said, any ideas for this? basically if I could just block access
to any pages which contain certain keywords, that'd do I think.

Thanks for your help.

Mark
(remembering setting up winproxy on his dads computer to give himself
internet access over the network without his parents knowing, just 7 years
ago...never did me any harm ;+) )