web

The smallest appliance on test, Blue Coat's ProxySG 200 is half the width of standard rack mount equipment and uses a notebook-style power supply. Rather than a pure web filtering appliance, the ProxySG 200 is a full-fledged web proxy, with URL filtering built in. This makes it quick to process requests and gives you a single point of management for your proxy and web filtering.

Finjan Software's NG-5100 can be deployed as a single box, but the system supports a distributed environment where one appliance serves as a policy server, while others can scan through load balancing. It can sit as either a standard web proxy, in which case you have to reconfigure all client computers, or as a transparent web proxy.

Clearswift's MIMEsweeper for Web applies the company's email filtering system to the internet. It will install on a single Windows 2000/2003 server and works as a web proxy, scanning all requests.

NetIQ's WebMarshal now supports all versions of Windows server. The installation is simple, but you need an SQL server on the network. While this means that you have to factor this cost into the purchase, it means you can distribute the WebMarshal install for better performance and scalability. You can also run the database on the same PC, as we did for our test.

Pearl Software's Echo 6 works in a slightly different way to the other products on test. Rather than blocking web traffic at the gateway, Echo uses a client/server approach. The server dictates the policy, while clients installed on each PC control internet access locally. While the server is very quick and easy to install, there's quite a lot of leg work involved in distributing the client to all of your network's computers.

SurfControl's Web Filter is, perhaps, the best known web filtering product on the market. We reviewed the Windows version of the product, but there are also versions available for Cisco CE, Check Point, Microsoft ISA and several third-party appliances, including Blue Coat and Finjan, both in this test. The standard Windows version is flexible – but you will need one copy of the filter per network.

Websense's Web Filtering application is part of its Websense Enterprise suite of tools. It requires a copy of Windows 2000/2003 Server and a compliant web server. We used it with Microsoft's IIS, but you can also use Apache.