IPCop Deputized

After much research and time, we have decided to try out the IPCop firewall with URL Filter for the school's needs. Our VERY limited budget made the decision even more difficult. So, we are currently testing it as a VMWare appliance on a Windows 2003 box. For the time being, we are directing 2 computer's traffic through it to test the waters. While IPCop is running in transparent mode, our LAN currently uses a Surfcontrol plugin on an ISA server and forcing the transparency to happen would require removing the MS Firewall client for all machines. A friend of mine will be scripting this so that the all workstations we be automatically run the uninstall.

One issue I am having is that I sometimes have to ping the IPCop box from the workstation in order to get internet access. For the testing phase, I am simply using IPCop as the gateway, but Linux seems to have an issue recognized other nodes on the network unless they are pinged. I haven't been able to find out much about this by Googling it. I guess I'm not using the correct keywords. If has any information on this, I would very much appreciate hearing about it. I suppose I could write a boot script but my guess is that there is an easier way. Anyone?? Does the fact that it is a VMWare appliance affect things? Thanks!!

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Firewalls and Schools

I've been researching firewall/proxy software or Linux-based system for a small school serving 300 students. It's been a bit frustrating that there seems to be very little information on this topic relating to schools. Since schools are required by CIPA/COPA/ERATE to put these safeguards in place, you think that there would be more information on this topic.

I search eschoolnews.com, which is constantly pushing their Resource Center, but the most recent article on the topic was from 1999. (Maybe when I get some more knowledge in this area, my blog can be a useful resource for someone facing similar issues.)

We will be replacing our current Windows 2000 Server (ISA 2004 firewall with SurfControl plugin for web content filtering) with a Linux box. So here is my question...

Will the firewall/proxy on Red Hat Linux (for example) with DansGuardian be an adequate replacement for the current server or is there something more robust we need to consider?

If anyone has an answer to this, please respond in the comments. Thanks!