How does your work filter the internet?
 

Our community college system claims that 80% of its internet bandwidth is being taken up by non-business usage. (They published a list of hits on various sites which, if true, is surprising). In response to this they are instituting a plan to block all non-college business internet sites from the college network including the library and all student wireless access.
A person who might need access to Ebay for an E-Business class needs to fill a request for access on a specific date and time, present the request to the college president who can then, if so inclined, open access from one specific computer during that time. Such requests will be renewed each semester.

I find the plan absurd, but well within a range of the comprehensible by today's class of administrators. But what I am really interested in is how other institutions and businesses deal with the issue? Are you blocked from using the internet at work? If so, what parameters are used in the blocking. Has anyone else seen any statistics on what kind of internet usage is typical in the workplace?

They just blocked wikipedia at my school (well county wide)

I actually used it for looking up info on obsucure subjects and such... Sure I never used it for papers but It is useful when I needed formulas or some info on scram jets and such..

there's no filtering at all right now but that will probably change soon.

Why would a school block wikipedia? There were some recent comparisons done where it came out looking very good in comparison to Brittanica.

I have no clue, but whatever they are doing its working....I can't access half the stuff you guys put on here . nothing from youtube, etc.:fork_off:

The government and a lot of big businesses use bluecoat software to block sites. There are many variables but they mostly set it up to block by meta tags. Meta tags are keywords embedded in a site to that search engines can find and rank them. One of the meta tags on this site is "chat". Since bluecoat is set to block any reference to "chat", I can't access it from work. There are fairly easy ways around it. If you would like to know how, let me know and I'll post the legal way to do it.

I don't what our company uses, but their filters detect websites using some type of malware scripting. I guess that pretty much blocks out the porn sites, but some legitimate sites get blocked as well. Some video and music download sites are filtered, and really spam-happy sites too. I'm sure there are keywords that cause certain sites to not come up either.

Whatever they use, I wouldn't mine having it on my home network...

I'm curious. How?

I'm at work now, this is one of the few sites that does make it though. They tightened restrictions a few months ago, but this site still came through. ebay used to work, but not anymore. I think because this is a 'mercedes' site its allowed though (it's a mb dealership)

Well here's how I look at it, from an ex IT Guy.
Bandwidth is so cheap and plentiful nowadays it probably takes more t&e to block everything and "handle" the exceptions than it does to leave it relatively open.
Block the porn sites and a few others, run a good scanner, AND have a strict and enforced usage policy.
Monitoring is easy, you use too much surfing non work BYE.
Employment contract states if you sue us because of this, (and lose) you pay our lawyers fees + our time to deal with it !!! (and the lawyer is responsible if you can't pay, sorry I think LAWYERS should be responsible for frivoulous lawsuits, not just their clients. Which ins. cos don't even try for, much less file for)
I repeat strict (AND SPELLED OUT) and enforced usage policy.

As I said, there are many ways. The easiest is through an anonymous proxy server or you could setup a VPN to your home computer which is what I do. You just log in the home computer via desktop sharing and surf and download from there. This should be some good reading for you.

http://www.freeproxy.ru/en/free_proxy/cgi-proxy.htm

This is interesting. The $$ I heard bandied about were that each of 13 colleges would have to pony up $500,000 to solve the bandwidth problem.
Seems the problems are related to our purchase of a $24 million dollar computer program used to operate all our registration/payroll/scheduling systems which is being bogged down by lack of bandwidth.
I'm IT ignorant.

Probably written by todays programmers.

I was at a company, program having major problems, All I heard was the DB is all FU'd.

OK, I'm the DBA and look at the code, and the calls into the DB, written in Access (Prob 1) with a SQL Server DB.
For each FIELD on the screen it checks a security db to see if you have rights. REPEAT for each field, individually !!!!!
Ok, and because of the way Access operates each call is really 2 calls to the DB.

There were only 50 to 100 fields on each screen.

Guess what, after you updated it, it went through the same process to see if you had the rights to update the data.

OH it checked the db to see if you had rights to change a field B4 it checked if you changed it, heck it check fields that were not displayed due to the first check.

I got snubed when I complained to the VP that these folks were on my case for showing their quality of workmanship rather than fixing the db to solve the problem.

Not by the VP, he was great, but by the project manager who complained.

At work we have no filters. At Rochester Schools, it seems like they block all and let a few exceptions through. The most annoying part is having to click "Yes" when ever you navigate to a new page. I hate those computers with a passion. I swear they inhibit learning more then help.

Ironically they allow MBshop through.

I remember back in high school they had ebay blocked out, and autotrader for some reason. At college AFAIK nothing is blocked from the student side. Never had a problem screwing around between classes on ebay or this site.

This is one reason I like working for myself, this is simply a non issue. We are to busy trying to make money to surf the net. Besides who cares if we do? I own the computer, I pay for the connection, the broker is not my boss. She cannot tell me no don't look at Ebay, I am an independent contractor.:D