NetMAX Newsletter - December 2006

1. [Support] Holiday Hours
2. [Tips and Tricks] Proxy Caching Server Tips
3. [New!] NetMAX Partners with Adaptec
4. [General] Let's Hear From You

1. Holiday Hours

It's the holiday time of year, and we here at NetMAX wish you Happy Holidays! Because of the holidays, NetMAX Support will be closed or open with reduced staff on the following days:

Monday, December 25th: closed
Tuesday, December 26th: closed
Wednesday, December 27th: open, reduced staff
Thursday, December 28th: open, reduced staff
Friday, December 29th: closed
Monday, January 1st 2007: closed

Online help will continue to be available during the holidays, and our technical support number will still be accepting messages, but immediate live phone support will be unavailable on "closed" days. Live support will be available on "open" days.

Because of these holiday hours, major support requests or orders received after 2pm on Friday, December 22nd may not be addressed until we resume normal support hours on Tuesday, January 2nd.

Thanks for your patience, and have a happy holiday season!

2. Proxy Caching Server Tips

The Proxy Caching Server filter, accessed via Home | Proxy Caching Server | Filters, was designed to work as a blacklist. In other words, clients are permitted to access all sites, _except_ those specified by the blacklist.

It is also possible to create a whitelist. Whitelists work by implicitly blocking all sites while only allowing access to the sites you enter. The trick is to create a whitelist with a blank line as the first filter. A blank line means "block all sites." Then, enumerate your allowed sites on the following lines as exceptions, preceded by an exclamation point, as such:

<blank line>
!netmax.com
!cybernet.com

The above example blocks access to all sites except for netmax.com and cybernet.com.

One potential source of confusion is with URL path regular expressions. If you precede your filter with /, only the PATH portion of the site will be used. In other words, to block:

http://somesite.com/somedir
http://anothersite.com/somedir
http://athirdsite.com/somedir

you could filter them all by specifying:

/somedir

If you have questions about this procedure, or any other aspect of NetMAX, please contact NetMAX Support directly.

3. NetMAX Partners with Adaptec

In order to keep up with the latest developments in controller technology, NetMAX has joined the Adaptec Connect Partner Program.

Adaptec offers the most complete range of Trusted Storage Solutions that will satisfy NetMAX customers now and as their needs evolve, and their partner program is dedicated to maximizing resources that support the storage solutions from Adaptec -- like the hardware used by many NetMAX users!

4. Let's Hear From You!

We would very much like to hear from you - especially about how you use NetMAX and Linux in your business, and what features we can add to NetMAX to make it better suit your needs. Please contribute your input to the NetMAX Forum at:

www.netmax.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

or to our general NetMAX contact form at:

www.netmax.com/partners/contacts.html

Let us know about your likes, dislikes, and general comments. We are especially interested in the features that you would like to see in the forthcoming NetMAX 6.0 release.

Thank you!