Apart from those cozy chairs in my college’s Internet cafe, I also vouch for their efforts in installing commercial firewall on the computers, and this is a serious problem for students.
The smart folks at any college can deploy several methods to block websites from Mac and Windows computer. Recently, when I was trying to watch an acceptable video on YouTube, I was introduced to an error message:
Bypassing the Best blocker: Sonicwall Firewall
The Sonicwall firewall software is one of the commercially available firewall that blocks websites like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, YouTube, etc. Out of curiosity, and the leisure time given, I went for an in-depth Google search on Sonicwall firewall. I really wanted to bypass the website restriction, you know!
Guess what did I find? Nothing about unblocking, but I learned that Sonicwall blocking software is one of the most popular website blocker used in colleges, universities, schools and also offices.
No doubt, that alone is one solid reason for our college to have Sonicwall installed on each and every computer. Accessing websites or bypassing custom filter hasn’t been any easy with Sonicwall. Although there are tons of unexplored possibilities for accessing websites, I’d like to share with you some of the ways that can be helpful in unblocking sonicwall blocked websites.
Unblocking Websites blocked Through Sonicwall
Solution 1: Translate Website to Access Sonicwall Blocked Sites
I was expecting the translation trick to bypass blocked websites as the admin configures sonicwall in such a way that whenever a user types in the exact website ‘keyword’ on his address bar, it displays the sonicwall website blocked message.
You’d be amazed (if this is your first time) to know that translating websites does let you access sonicwall blocked website. It worked for me, so might as well work for you 🙂
Which translation service to use? I used Google translate (translate.google.com) for unblocking orkut, myspace and facebook. Though there was hardly any luck. But then I gave a shot at the Yahoo! babelfish service (babelfish.yahoo.com) and entered the url of the website. Whoa 🙂 It worked! I was able to access the blocked webpage, and even Youtube is working fine!
Albeit there’s a slight problem – I wasn’t able to login to SSL sites. Doesn’t affect me as 90% of the blocked webpages were accessible now. So take that, Sonicwall!
Solution 2: Use Proxies for accessing Internet sites
The possibility of accessing and ways to block sites are endless. Admin can actually block all the websites, or just do keyword filtering using Sonicwall. Some might try to hack into the work system. I don’t know if that’s a solution I’d recommend if you are working from your office.
I admit, translating website wasn’t the first idea that flashed my mind. Actually the use of proxies are one of the common way to access most of the blocked sites. But not when Sonicwall is installed. It was easy to guess that those free glype proxies floating on the web didn’t work.
You can try out paid proxies, or get a paid software which delivers promising results. Also try out vpn clients. I cannot use VPN client softwares as guys over here use linux system, but if you are running Windows in your office, or schools, with Sonicwall installed, then try out the these free vpn clients which might just work!
Solution 3: Check out these unblocking Tips
Sites blocked using Windows Hosts file can be accessed by removing a few lines from the host file. You can also received webpages to your email if you are not able to access a particular site. Yet another article titled “How to unblock websites” offers some some key solutions to access content of a webpage that’s already blocked through Sonicwall firewall.
I’d be surprised if the above workarounds didn’t work for you.
