Working of GuardianConnect: A Bird's Eye View.

GuardianConnect is a Network device to be connected to your LAN so that all Internet traffic will pass through it. Therefore GuardianConnect will get a chance to intervene the requests sent to the Internet from the LAN and the responses coming back from the Internet.

Thus, if GuardianConnect detects a request or a response which is inappropriate, it will reject that request or prevent that response from reaching respective computer. See the diagram below.

Unlike other software-based solutions which have to be installed in each desktop computer, GuardianConnect works in the Network-level. So it is more reliable and effective; when you install GuardianConnect in your LAN all desktop computers in your LAN will come under its umbrella.

Working of GuardianConnect: A Technical Description.

1. Examine the Request URL

   It is possible to say that whether a URL is going to fetch any inappropriate content or not by examining the URL. Certain word combinations in the URL positively indicates the nature of the content it is referring to.

   A typical Web request URL looks like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=film+songs. This is a very safe-looking URL though this does not ensure that the content it is referring is safe. But on the contrary, look at this URL: http://www.some*valid*hostname.com/nude-girl.jpg. GuardianConnect will block this one. Because the chance, for the image it is referring to is of obscene in nature, is very high.

2. Check the Target Host Name Against URL Blacklist Database

   GuardianConnect maintains a database of URLs which are known to carry inappropriate content. If the Web request is targeted to one of those web sites, the requested will be rejected right away.

3. Examine the Response

   If neither of the above tests does not return a positive result, GuardianConnect will send the request to the Internet on behalf of the requested computer in the LAN. When the response comes, GuardianConnect will examine the content by parsing the page.

   This is done with the help of a ``Bad-words Dictionary''. Each time it finds a word or phrase which is listed in this dictionary, GuardianConnect add a weightage to that page. And if this exceeds the threshold value, it will send an ``Access Denied'' page to the requested computer. Else the page will be passed to the computer.

Here is a schematic which shows this flow of request and response:

All requests (either rejected or allowed) will be logged for report generation purposes. GuardianConnect administrator can access reports any time.