Some 200,000 school children in 700 schools in Yorkshire will be protected from inappropriate content on the Internet by Open Source web content filter applications.
The web filter is built with web proxy cache server Squid and content filter Dansguardian, both installed on servers running Linux. The applications were selected and tested in 2006 by Sirius, a British IT services firm for the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning (Yhgfl). This is one of the ten regional organisations that the government selected to provide Internet connections to all schools.
"Deployment of the web content filtering system at Yhgfl started in October 2006 and we are still only part way through that process. The roll-out began with Hull in late 2006, then continued with schools in Wakefield and Sheffield. Doncaster and Calderdale schools are to follow shortly", says Yhgfl's Kassie Holliday. "We have not made our configuration public. We are using a default installation of Squid and Dansguardian and have not created new features to the software."
The web content filter uses blacklists to block certain websites and white-lists for allowing access to others. These lists can be controlled by schools, local school authorities or at a global level. The application can also check for certain words and phrases and all web access is logged to a central database used for reporting to school and other educational authorities.
According to Sirius, the filtering system can handle extremely high volumes of web traffic, thanks to modern load balancing mechanisms. It runs on a high performance server farm located in Wakefield Town Hall, removing the support overhead from numerous, local servers based in the schools. "Centralising services is also significantly more energy efficient", writes Sirius.
© European Communities 2007
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*update 2018* Dansguardian is no longer being developed. Please see e2guardian.
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