Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Guardian of the young Net surfer

C. Gouridasan Nair

FIREWALL: GuardianConnect is a table-top box meant for schools, hostels and libraries where children use the Internet.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Children and young adults who surf the Internet are vulnerable to sudden onrush of inappropriate content, mostly of the pornographic kind. One of the major headaches for parents and school authorities is the pervasive presence of pornographic content in cyberspace and its sudden `appearance' even when the search is based on a very innocuous word like `toys'. Many software solutions to tackle the menace are available on the Net, some of them can be downloaded free and others are available for a price. A group of youngsters in Thiruvananthapuram has now developed a hardware solution for the menace: an instrument that they have appropriately christened `GuardianConnect'.

`GuardianConnect' is a very rugged table-top box that guards the gates to cyberspace from where there is the ever-present threat of inappropriate content jostling its way into individual computers. It is basically meant for schools, hostels, libraries and other places where children use the Internet. It does not require much care unlike computer servers and can function in normal room temperature for prolonged hours without fail. One `GuardianConnect' can protect all computers in a LAN and can handle up to 2 mbps of Internet traffic. There is no per-user licence or number-of-users restrictions and there is no recurring licence cost either. It can be installed and configured in less than 15 minutes and is, hopefully, a march over software solutions that a skilled user can circumvent with some effort.

Says Anil K. Nair, who led the team that developed `GuardianConnect', "We set upon thinking about such a device after the incident of misuse of cell phones in a public school in Delhi came to light and our Education Minister decided to ban cinematic dance in schools. We noticed that while all these happened, they were missing to spot where the real evil lay, the bad side of the Internet and we decided to develop a solution for schools, one that would work right out of the box. Thus GuardianConnect was born."

Like all `Net Nannies', the network device supports a "white list" and a `black list'. When a LAN user tries to browse a web site, `GuardianConnect' would intercept the request and check the web site name against the URL backlist database. If it finds the key word there, the request will be rejected. The request is allowed to pass through otherwise. But when the requested page is returned, `GuardianConnect' would examine the page for words and phrases against the bad words dictionary; for each bad word/phrase it finds, a weightage is assigned to the page. If the weightage thus accumulated, while examining the page, exceeds the threshold value, it will be concluded that the page is inappropriate for delivery. Else it will be delivered to the user.

If the requested web site is there in the white list, it will be allowed unconditionally. All page requests and denials are logged along with time and IP address for report generation. Browsing requests for files with specified file name extensions such as .exe can be optionally denied. The device keeps track of all browsing done by the LAN users and provides usage reports like list of web sites visited during a given period and list of blocked web sites. It updates its URL blacklist database and bad words dictionary automatically from a centralised server over the Internet to ensure its effectiveness over time. Being an easy-to-use web-based interface, even those with little knowledge of computer networks can manage it. It can also act as an Internet gateway and firewall and also features essential LAN management functions.

Mr. Anil says it took his team one year to develop `GuardianConnect.' When it was tried in a major English medium school in the Kerala capital, it blocked more than 300 inappropriate pages that might have otherwise appeared on the computer screens as children surfed the Net. The team has already obtained trade mark registration for the product and put the details up on the Net at http://www.guardianconnect.in/

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