Our school will be allowing internet access to through FIRN for students. However we would like to limit access to educational sites only. Is there hardware which could assist with this situation? We would not want minors to visit sites on the internet which are not appropriate.

Why don't you try novel border manager. Seems to work at our college

You could have someone check the software. Most networking software that I know can be set up to block all sites except those that you specify. You could easily find all the sites you want you students to look at.

use linux red hat with squid software which is the best and free also .

A good service that I like is provided by MTD Technologies. It's called MTD SafeSurfer. It runs at the network level, so it's very very hard to get around it. They keep logfiles of what sites users go to (that's the only thing they record) so they can update their blocklist. Some sites are even automatically blocked using the ratings encoded into the webpage itself! You also have the option of requesting reviews of websites and bypassing the filter using an assigned user ID and password. More information is at their website at http://www.mtdtech.on.ca/Service/Services/Filtered_Internet_Access/filtered_internet_access.html

Hope this helps!

Oh, just another little note that everything is monitored 24/7 at their Data Centre. No need to have a dedicated person blocking sites or trying to configure a proxy server. Their tech support is excellent too!