Q1: What about blocking gambling, game, and hate sites?
Q2: Can users still view pictures, such as image searches and videos?
Q3: Can I allow some users to access black-listed sites, and not others?
Q4: Can the notification page be modified, when a user attempts to access pornography?
Q5: Which takes greater precedence, the white-list or black-list?
Q6: Does the filtering slow down the Internet traffic?
Q7: What happens when I get a false positive?
Q8: Can I choose to filter some subnets, and not others?
Q9: Can I authenticate some subnets or IP's, and not others?
Q10: Does the web-authentication authenticate based on computer logon name?
Q11: How does the web caching work?
Question 1: What about blocking gambling, game, and hate sites?
A: CIPAFilter currently has image search sites, gambling and game site categories, as pre-defined black-list entries.
However, with any Internet filter system, there is always going to be inappropriate content getting through. What CIPAFilter focuses on are some of the major problems associated with category filtering, such as false positives and management. When you click on hate sites for example, the reality is that the filters are only able to block a small percentage of these web-sites. You can block additional sites manually if necessary.
Question 2: Can users still view pictures, such as image searches and videos?
A: No filter today can inspect the actual pixels and content of an image file, and determine if it is inappropriate, especially without causing severe false positives. This is a problem every filter has. However, CIPAFilter's only vulnerability is an image-only page, with very little or no text. Most pornographic sites have text because they want to appear on search-engines, and use very vulgar language not common to many other web pages. This way, CIPAFilter can focus on catching more pornography without considering the source of the page, while still allowing you to take abuse to a disciplinary level. A user attempting to access pornography will most certainly trip the filter, even though an occasional page got through.
Question 3: Can I allow some users to access black-listed sites, and not others?
A: Yes. CIPAFilter's blacklist will allow certain users or IP addresses to bypass the blacklisted sites, but still have pornography-filtered access.
Question 4: Can the notification page be modified, when a user attempts to access pornography?
A: Yes. A custom page can be uploaded to CIPAFilter that will be displayed in the web browser when the filtering system is triggered.
Question 5: Which takes greater precedence, the white-list or black-list?
A: The white-list will take precedence.
Question 6: Does the filtering slow down the Internet traffic?
A: Absolutely not. CIPAFilter is written in a low-level language, and uses a very effective method of rapidly analyzing text patterns, in its attempt to find the context of the site. All the filtering is on-the-fly and not dependent on your bandwidth.
In situations where there are thousands of machines and large amounts of bandwidth available, you simply upgrade to the next hardware model of the product.
Question 7: What happens when I get a false positive?
A: In the rare event that you have a legitimate web-site blocked, you can easily white-list the site. We also encourage you to contact our feedback (feedback@cipafilter.com), or a support technician, to alert them about this. Because of the 0% false positive goal, we are very interested any false positives that may occur, and will fix a bug when necessary.
Question 8: Can I choose to filter some subnets, and not others?
A: Yes, this is easily modified in the Authorized Subnets section of the configuration. CIPAFilter will still route the traffic and virus scan it, but alert the content filter to ignore the rest.
Question 9: Can I authenticate some subnets or IP's, and not others?
A: Yes. A typical example of this would be a district with a high school and a K-8 school. The high school users are required to authenticate for Internet access, while the K-8 computers are not.
Question 10: Does the web-authentication authenticate based on computer logon name?
A: Yes. This is currently supported with Windows Active Directory and Novell Networks. Currently, the transparent Windows AD requires a simple client on the computers, and Novell networks don't require anything but a server present on the network.
Question 11: How does the web caching work?
A: The web caching is automatic, and can be configured for any size. The caching engine is a widely known open-source package called "squid", and stores recently visited web-sites on the hard drive, so other machines can access the same site locally, at a faster speed. This helps conserve bandwidth. Web caching is easily configured with a simple checkbox on the web page.
