Re: [squid-users] Websense with Squid

DISCLAIMER: OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THEIR AUTHORS ONLY, AND NOT
REPRESENTATIVE OF THEIR COMPANY POLICIES.

Maybe some other of you Squid users who might want to integrate with Squid can
get on this little bandwagon? Here is what has already been said:

From: Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com>

"WebSense probably just hasn't run the numbers...Squid has 70% or more of
the worldwide installations of web caching servers, depending on who you
believe (I've heard numbers from some analysts placing it in the 90's
everywhere except the US, where it is acknowledged to be only about
60-70%). Good luck to them, if they want to compete with the companies
who do play nicely with the most popular proxy on the planet while /not/
playing nicely."

C. Jon Larsen wrote:

I second this opinion. The k-12 education market requires proxy content
filters to receive e-rate funding. Running websense on squid would make a
lot of sense for these schools.

On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Simon White wrote:

I think a commercial program like WebSense is shooting itself in the foot
by not allowing me to integrate it with Open Source projects. I work in
Africa and Open Source is a Good Thing here. Microsoft products are no
cheaper in Africa, and as they close in with the BSA and start, in 2002,
their war on piracy, then many businesses are going to be forced to think
Open Source so that they can have a solid network without huge annual fees
for upgrades and such.

One thing that is an issue for us here is bandwidth cost, and thus web
filters / spam filters / caches are an excellent way for us to acheive
more with limited resources. I have checked, configured and in some cases
installed Squid at African ISPs in Tunisia, Morocco and Malawi, and it was
always present even on networks where commercial software had been part of
the initial investment, Cobalt CacheRaqs and Qubes run an albeit less from
perfect version of Squid which we have deployed in Educational projects.
Whole schools run, if they have internet at all, at 64 or 128 kbps and
then that's only those that are privately funded by fee paying students.

The one thing that a commercial product like Websense can do is improve
productivity. 128kbps pipes get saturated quickly if an efficient filter
is not in place, and for all the great efforts of something like Squid
Block, it is, as described on the web site:

"some general catchall rules that filter out sites, and a second
list of sites that would be blocked by this list, but are in reality
legitimate web sites."

which is a far cry from a human database which is updated on a regular
basis. Lot of false positives can come out of general rules. You cannot
expect the open source community, with all due respect, to come up with a
full-on database of sites in competition with a commercial product which
is clearly in a market with few competitors, and will win because its
efficiency can save a company a lot more money in lower bandwidth, higher
cost situations.

So, I was hoping to include Websense in an integration with Squid and can
even get packets to the Websense machine on whatever port it likes
transparently, but I can't use it because they have developed a
proprietary protocol, possibly aimed at forcing us all to buy specific
hardware or commercial firewalls in order to keep the investment in the
"club" including Microsoft, Cisco, Check Point, and Inktomi...

Well anyway enough politics, thanks for the responses I have had. I will
have to go install an old licence of Microsoft Proxy I have hanging around
on the network to get packets back from Websense.

On 20-Feb-02 at 10:49, uksupport@websense.com's inspired musing was thus :
> Hi,
>
> Personally, I would tend to agree that these are certainly valid points
> pointing towards what could be a good reason for such an integration.
> However, you must understand that these are not decisions made at this
> level, rather by the product Management team. I would encourage you to raise
> this with them. You can do so via this link:
> http://www.websense.com/products/feedback/index.cfm . I assume that if
> enough people express an interest in this integration Websense may choose to
> ship such an integration.
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> EMEA Support Group
> Websense
> 3000 Hillswood Drive
> Chertsey
> Surrey KT16 0RS
> United Kingdom
> Office: +44(0)1932 796244
>
> WEBSENSE ... Employee Internet Management
> For frequently asked questions, please refer to our knowledge base at
> http//www.websense.com/support/knowledgebase/search.cfm
Received on Wed Feb 20 2002 - 05:33:27 MST