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Limiting Access to the Internet

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Is there a way to limit access at a workstation to the Internet? I have students in a classroom setting with full access to the internet, and I want to restict access to certian Internet sites. How is this accomplished? Thanks for your assistance.

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Limiting Access to the Internet

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edit the hosts file, using notepad, in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc dir … the following is an example of the default hosts file

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost

To find the IP for each site, run a command window and ping the URL which will give you the IP address.

Then add thesites to the hosts file … like for yahoo add

66.218.71.90 http://www.yahoo.com

Or for msn then

207.68.172.234 http://www.msn.com

And so on.

Hope this helps

-Dave

Limiting Access to the Internet

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Limiting Access to the Internet

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Most commonly, this is done by the use of a proxy server that the workstations would use to access the Internet. You can then set up various rules/filters on the proxy server to deny access to certain sites.

Depending on a budget level, there aresolutions like Websense that can be extremely useful and do most of the work for you. You may want to take a look at http://www.websense.com

Good luck!

Limiting Access to the Internet

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Thaks for the recommendation. I’m evaluating it now.

Limiting Access to the Internet

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If you are want to deny access to only certain web sites you can also use Internet Options, Content, Settings and either disallow or allow a website. This is not perfect but it is a start if you don’t have a proxy server or it allows a site you don’t like.

Limiting Access to the Internet

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Limiting Access to the Internet

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