ZyXEL Communications HS100/HS100W manual Content Filtering with an External Server

HomeSafe User’s Guide

)The web site displays a registration successful web page. It may take up to another ten minutes for content filtering to be activated. See Checking Content Filtering Activation for how to know if the content filtering has been activated.

Content Filtering with an External Server

Your HomeSafe uses a content filter lookup process as described below.

Figure 2-19 Content Filtering Lookup Procedure

1.A computer sends an HTTP request to a web server.

2.The HomeSafe looks up the web site in its cache. If an attempt to access the web site was made in the past, a record of that web site’s category will be in the HomeSafe’s cache. The HomeSafe either blocks or forwards the request based on how you configure the category based content filtering.

The HomeSafe drops a URL record from the content filter cache after the content filter cache timeout period (default 72 hours). All of the URL records are also cleared from the local cache when the HomeSafe reboots. You can use ip urlfilter webControl cache timeout on the command line to change the timeout period.

If the HomeSafe doesn’t have a record of the web site, it will query the external content filtering server and simultaneously send the request to the web server.

The external content filtering database may change a web site’s category or rate a previously uncategorized web site.

3.The external content filtering server sends the category information back to the HomeSafe, which then either forwards or blocks the web content. The web site address is then also stored in the HomeSafe’s content filtering cache.

Checking Content Filtering Activation

Since there will be no activation notice, when content filtering is active, you should see an access blocked message when your HomeSafe has been setup with parental control and you try to access a restricted website or service.

Introducing the Web Configurator 2-17