Having used both Websense and Barracuda I'd say they are both phenomenal products. We will continue to use the Barracuda Spam firewall - those just rock. I'm not suggesting you go the watchguard route, but just be sure whatever Barracuda you choose can handle the load. Although the reporting on the watchguard is not as good as the barracuda, the devices can handle the load and you can get pretty granular on the configs. We are moving off the units and having our watchguardВ XTMsВ do content filtering along with virus scanning of web traffic. The reporting is pretty good as well and they are very easy to configure. I think the content filtering works well on the units. Basically we have too much traffic for the units (too many tcp connections - out connection count is almost always 100%) and would need to step up to the 610 or 810 which gets real expensive. Even with the second unit we are still experience slow downs and I've been working with support. I have about 325 users scattered through about 9 sites.

We were killing the first unit so we added a second 310. The company I'm with has been using the Barracuda Web Filter 310 for a couple years. So just wondering if anyone had shortlisted these two solutions and which you went for and why? Also anyone's experiences with them especially with satellite offices. One which Websense would not suffer from as all uses would be set up to access the 'cloud'.ДЄ negative on the Websense option is that it is more expensive which is hard to justify when you don't really get to see any kit in the office and off the back of this I am quite apprehensive about paying for a service and never really seeing anything - weird I know. Again a strain put on the internal network of the main office.

This is obviously the same with Websense as it is cloud based so nothing needs to be installed locally.ДЄ negative of the Barracuda is that any traffic for the satellite offices would have to leave on their own lines, come into the main office to access the Barracuda to allow or deny access to the website originally going to. The pro's to me of the Barracuda is that it is completely self contained so would not place any further stain on our servers. Just a bit of info we are a company of around 70ish employees working out of one main office and fourВ satellite offices I was all set to use Barracuda until our 3rd line support company suggested Websense. Morning all, quick question on what you guys are using for your web filtering.

Websense filter url except