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| NetNow
by Bob Walder
The use of proxy servers is common in small to medium-sized businesses these days, providing a single point of access to the Internet for all the users on the internal network. Some will provide only Web and FTP proxy, whilst others might include caching or one or two other services. However, it is rare to find a single product that combines not only proxy services, but also messaging, web caching, FTP, NEWS, filtering and content barring, and even firewalling. NetNow from UK-based RedRock Technologies, is just such a product. Setting Up Installation of NetNow is straightforward, and it requires minimal configuration. The first time the product is fired up after installing from CD the administrator is walked through a fool-proof wizard that prompts for type of Internet access (dial-up or permanent), ISP details, domain name, outbound mail delivery, mailbox creation, news servers, and internal IP address ranges. User account details can be configured manually or, in the latest version, can be synchronised with an NT domain database. We installed on a dual-homed system behind a router to the Internet in order to make the most of its firewalling capabilities and provide protection and proxy services for all machines behind it. If you have a dial-up connection, however, there are a number of standard settings for specific ISP’s that should cover most situations – at least in the UK. In our case, it made light work of detecting and configuring the network cards, and simply had to ask us for the range of internal IP addresses in order to get things up and running. Basic firewall protection can provide both inclusive and exclusive access for machines, and this degree of security can be individually configured for each of NetNow's services. One of the main services is obviously the e-mail server, which can handle any number of mail addresses and a range of protocols, providing POP3 access for users and SMTP transfer to your ISP’s mail server, for instance. Mail handling is completely automatic, with dial-up connections scheduled at specific times or on-demand. NetNow can now support receive e-mailing from Internet Service Providers using SMTP, when the SMTP server requires ETRN to initiate mail delivery. Without this feature NetNow is unable to receive e-mails from certain ISP's. NetNow also supports comprehensive mail routing both within your site, and for outbound mail to other sites, as well as built-in junk mail filtering and anti-relay capability. Each mail user can have any number of aliases for his or her mailbox, and there are a number of automatic mail forwarding and redirection methods available. One very powerful feature not normally found on mail servers at this end of the market is mailing lists, which can be used both for internal distribution and public access. The mailing list feature can provide public discussion forums (with a variety of "subscription by mail" mechanisms) as well as distribution lists (such as "sales team" list). With the latest version of NetNow, it is not even necessary to install or use an e-mail client to send and receive e-mails, since all you need is a web browser and the NetNow WebMail service. Internet news is also included, providing a full NNTP news server on the NetNow machine which can trawl public news servers at regular intervals and provide the content off-line to your internal users, filtered to remove certain types of news items if required. This can obviously help to keep connections costs down (whenever NetNow is on-line for other purposes it can download news content in the background), as well as providing superior performance to internal users. Web and FTP Services Both Web and FTP server functionality is included within NetNow, providing basic services for internal users, and an HTTP to FTP gateway is provided allowing users to download files from FTP servers via a Web browser where FTP support is not included as standard in the browser. The capability to act as both a Web and FTP proxy is also available, forcing users through the NetNow gateway for their Internet access. The proxy server provides point-to-point TCP/IP tunnelling for any single stream protocol (such as SMTP, NNTP, POP3 and HTTP) and FTP support has been added to the latest version. The Web proxy can connect to another Web cache or directly to the requested site. Content barring provides control over what is accessed on the Internet, as well as control over e-mail content where required. Performance is enhanced by the inclusion of a Web cache, and for off-line sites that are regularly used, you can have a web crawler periodically scan the sites for pages and download them in advance. This makes it possible to browse entire sites without needing to go online at all, and NetNow can also index these sites for keyword searching. Reports and Customisation NetNow is designed to be equally useful in both single-user and multi-user environments. Multi-user features include periodic accounting, and imposing limits on the use of user's mail slots (such as volume and quantity of mail). The accounting reports can be posted automatically to the administrators and users can be warned when they approach their limits. Most of NetNow's templates (automatic messages such as welcome messages to mailing lists, and delivery failure reports) can be easily customised. Templates make use of a powerful scripting language built in to NetNow, and scripts can also be used separately, both scheduled and triggered by messages and system events. Verdict NetNow is an excellent product that combines a wealth of functionality at a reasonable price. It allows the administrator of a small to medium-sized business to offer all the usual Internet-related services on a single Windows-based box. Product: NetNow Version 5
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