prednisone for acute back pain problems with zantac premarin horse prescription celebrex cost anchor coumadin clinic glucophage lavender allergies side effects with taking celexa lisinopril indigestion zoloft and overeating coral calcium helps diabetes dangers of zoloft in children lexapro pill images hgh formulas plavix fever what schedule drug is depakote buy now viagra beginning side effects of lexapro orlando florida breast augmentation 3000 ordr nolvadex online ultram ultram tramadol hci tablets breast enhancement coffee coumadin and lexapro micardis and formulary drug list is augmentin a sulfa drug claritin d during pregnancy risperdal withdrawal side effects synthroid it is a drug order cialis in united states altace and cellcept prozac and forgetfulness

In my capacity as a Dad, I find it a bit scary when my kids are online, and I don’t have any reliable monitoring software or - better yet - a good porn filter - in place to protect them from some of the more unseemly business out there. When we had our ISP - Gulf Coast Internet, based in the thriving metropolis of Pensacola, FL - back in the glory days of the net prior to the dot bomb, we provided a filtering service to some of our customers so that anyone using their dialup account would not be subject to the bad stuff. The provider of this filtering service - Nessus - did a remarkable job of maintaining a list of objectionable content. Subscribers to their service were pleased to have this net based filter available to them. It was 100%(well - extremely) reliable, in that it wasn’t software that Junior knew how to get around at night when you were in sleeping or out for dinner, etc. Also, and perhaps almost as importantly, this solution did not compel you to install yet another software package along with all the assorted and sundry bloatware that is already dragging your machine down to a crawl.

So, after we left the ISP behind, I was still able to use this filter for while, but when they finally reconfigured that box, or got rid of that service, we were left with the ‘look over their shoulder’ method of child-internet surf monitoring. Keeping the computer that the kids can use in a central part of the house, such as the kitchen, helps this process, but it is still a losing proposition.

So - what is available out there to help you? All kinds of software packages for the Windows environment that promise to prevent the kids from doing all of those things that they shouldn’t be doing online. Just install it after you’ve installed your antivirus, antiphishing, antipopup, antiadware, etc. - and watch that system slow down just a little bit more. I mean - how much time does the average parent spend trying to perform all of the administrative tasks that they need to do to try to plug all the holes left in MS software? I for one find it particularly frustrating, knowing that it does not have to be this way. Go buy a Mac already. Which is what we’ve done, a couple times now in the last three years. After OS X came out, and I became aware of how slick and polished the entire package is, we had to take the plunge. The family got a new iMac with the swivel screen and it sat in the kitchen on the bar, where the screen could be turned in for recipe perusal, and out for the kids homework and surfing. Apple is doing a good job locking down and maintaining security. It is really nice not having to worry about installing and maintaining all of the antivirus and anti-adware tools. The tools are all pretty good, and fairly intuitive - this greatly reduces the internal tech support load - which is not what computer people want to do after dinner. Ask me how I know.

Anyway, the point of this diatribe is that I needed a solution that would work for a small home network that consists of both PC’s and Mac’s - I use PC’s in my work as my customers do, so it’s not a matter of choice. So, it used to be that Belkin was providing very inexpensive routers that included the ability to use a third party filtering service - one that is now called Blue Coat - used to be Cyberian. What a great tool for families, I thought. After repeated attempts to get it working on my Belkin pre-N wireless router, I went through the normal tech support nightmare on steroids - particularly bad since Belkin is primarily a cable accessory company - only to find out that they stopped providing this service.

There are some more expensive routers that provide filtering, but after some peeking and poking, I found that some of the less expensive ZyXEL routers provide access to this third party filtering. So, I got a ZyXEL Zywall 2 plus, as that seemed to be the cheapest one that did provide this service. Still - at about $150, and $60 a year or so for the service, it is a bit more expensive than the $30 linksys or netgear router/wifi hubs that end up in most homes. But - peace of mind it does provide. I had some history with ZyXEL, apparently a Taiwanese company that appears to be much more engineering oriented as opposed to marketing driven. We had used their modems when we first started our ISP - they provided a technology that gave you a 16.8! kbps connection as opposed to the slower 14.4. Anyway - I’d read some good things about the ZyXEL modems and had some sucess with them, and we had a good experience with them at Gulf Coast. This router is a bit more complex than your consumer grade linksys, and there’s a little more configuration required, but it’s been working solidly for me now for several months, and I recommend it highly for all parents with more than one computer at home - irrespective of whether or not those computers are Macs or PCs. I found some of the best prices on the net at a small company called Nowthor - http://shopping.nowthor.com/zyxel-zywall-2-plus.html - I’ve ordered both the router and the subscription to the filtering service(what ZyXEL calls the iCard Silver) through them, and gotten good turn around time.