Introduction

A county government serving more than 4000 daily patrons in more than 18 public libraries set out to provide high-speed Internet service so that the patrons would be able to use the access for researching and information sharing. The computing hardware involved ranges from laptops and desktop computers to mobile devices such as tablets and cell phones. With the deployment of such Internet access comes with the need for an Internet filtering system.

Challenges / Requirements

The requested filtering system must be timely and prompt when it comes to content filtering and URL scanning, and such efficiency must be delivered without a white list of approved websites. The filtering system also must offer speed, reliability and layered control over the types of content to which the patrons have access. Finally, the ideal filtering system must come with intelligent mechanism for identifying, blocking or granting access to the Internet and the service provider must also guarantee prompt technical support.

Lanner Solution

The FW-8894, a high performance 1U rackmount network security system is built with not one, but two Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 Series processors and Intel® C612 Wellsburg PCH (codenamed “Grantley”), offering speedy packet processing performance, high memory bandwidth and power efficiency.

The FW-8894 is capable of handling not only enterprise-grade network traffic data rates but also associated control/signaling infrastructure requirements. Also notable is the support for hardware-based Intel® QuickAssist acceleration technology, enabling offloading encryption/decryption and compression for up to 25 Gbps.

The FW-8894’s modular interface allows the installation of various Lanner modules, making available a maximum of four slots for 1G, 10G, or 40G, Fiber or Copper/Bypass NIC modules (LAN Bypass may vary depending on module specifications).

Other features include a maximum of 512GB DDR4 2133 MHz memory, 650W 1+1 ATX redundant power supply, OPMA slot for IPMI, 4 hot-swappable cooling fans with smart fan control and support for generation 2 or generation 3 LAN bypass depending on selected NIC module specifications.

Benefits

Upon hardware and software integration using Lanner’s FW-8894 and a proprietary content control suite, the IT personnel at the said county government are equipped with the needed filtering system for layered web management.

Policies can be set using specific user groups, so that patrons using different devices are granted access to their requested content in the appropriate format and layout. The filter system goes beyond keeping an eye on the information requested and accessed, it also protects users from inappropriate content and malwares, while affording administrative staff control over other web content within the same domain.

The filtering process is selective and can be content or application based. The staff and patrons, for example, can both be granted access to the public libraries’ Facebook/LinkedIn pages with the embedded chat and email functions turned off; the staff and patrons can be granted unrestricted access to entertainment and multimedia sites such as YouTube or be redirected to only the content-safe versions of the same sites using the built-in rating algorism.

Another benefit offered by Lanner’s FW-8894 is its modularity. Its modular interface enables the installation of 1G, 10G, or 40G, Fiber or Copper/Bypass NIC modules, allowing the said county government not only to upgrade its Internet connection to 10 Gigabit-per-second but also to deliver the support for Secure Socket Layer (SSL) decryption at very high speeds, not to mention the said proprietary content control suite also offers fast deployment, ease of use and responsive technical support.

Result/Conclusion

The seamless integration between Lanner’s FW-8894 and the content control suite resulted in the perfect content filtering system for the aforementioned county government, making available, granular and layered control over staff and users’ Internet usage. And given Lanner hardware’s scalability and modularity, upgrading the Internet speed to 10 Gbps was simple and timely. Finally, the county goverment’s Internet gatekeepers can not only easily sort and reclassify websites/content in a matter of seconds but also can seek out support from the software provider when/if needed, without delay.

 

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FW-8894

1U High Performance x86 Network Appliance for Enterprise Firewall, UTM and IPS.

CPU Dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v3/v4 series CPU (Haswell/Broadwell-EP)
Chipset Intel C612 series Chipset

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