The preview of NxFilter v4.0.1, Free license for Jahaslist, License change for business users.

[Jinhee]

We have been working on NxFilter v4. And the first release of it is v4.0.1. Many things have been changed.

Firstly, we don't support Shallalist on v4. Instead, we included a free Jahaslist license for 20 users. If you want to use Shallalist you have to stay with v3. And we allow commercial use of NxFilter v4 and redistribution of its modified version. We did it already with NxOEM, but the problem was that it was too much work for us to maintain one more version. So we replaced NxOEM with NxFilter v4 and it has the same license with NxOEM.

The free Jahaslist license will be working like this.

  1. When you install it first time, you can use it for 30 days without any restriction.

  2. After 30 days it becomes 20 user license.

We also added an option for 'No system categories' on v4.

These are the changes we made on v4,

  - Camel case notation applied.

  - 'report_pw' on admin.jsp changed to 'rpw'.

  - SLF4J introduced for enhancing logging performance.

  - NxParam has been removed.

  - Shallalist support has been removed.

  - Cache DB connection not released bug on Main.deleteOld fixed.

  - Sanitize HTML before NxClassifier.findCategory.

  - Reclassifying on NxClassifer data updates ctime of its statistics.

  - Only the group name being associated to the applied policy will be logged.

  - Sending group name on Syslog exportation.

  - Default values for DNS, HTTP connection, read timeout on NxClassifier increased

    to 6 seconds.

  - NxClassifier finds a category by redirected domain when it gets redirected.

  - Use placeholder for SQL with LogCache.

  - Bypass Main.remoteUpdate on a slave node.

  - New admin login page applied.

  - Logging queue with LogFacade class added.

  - Keep response cache when the connection to upstream server lost.

One of the notable changes is 'Adoption of Camel-case'. With this change, some of our business users need to rewrite their GUI as our API notation method changed like below,

  User.select_one -> User.selectOne

But this has to be done for our future.

And we did some performance tuning on our logging module. We introduced so called 'Logging Queue'. With this feature, we hope there's no more slow down from traffic DB being locked.

Another one is about group name. Now we only keep one group name in the log but the group name should be associated to the policy into which its user fell. And as a result we can send group name on Syslog exportation. We didn't want to send +50 group names on it.

Lastly, we made it keeping DNS cache when it lose its connection to upstream server. So your NxFilter is supposed to be working even if it lost the Internet connection until you restore it. But this cache is in-memory so you will lose the cache when you restart it. You have to restore the connection without restarting it.

You can download it from below,

  http://www.nxfilter.org/download/nxfilter-4.0.1.zip

[Giorgio Catena]

Hi Jinhee, will komodia db be supported?

[Jinhee]

Yes, it will be supported. We only removed Shallalist as we see a possible license problem with it.

[Jinhee]

There is a bug with login-page. You need to change 'action_flag' to 'actionFlag' on 'Config > Block Page > Login Page'. It will be updated automatically when it's released officially.

[Giorgio Catena]

Which is the license problem? Afaik you have to request the ok if you want to use it for business purposes, i don't see any other clue, this is what i found on the license of shallalist:

"The usage of Shalla's Blacklists within companies, institutions or government agencies are considered commercial usage in the sense that it is not private but part of the business (restricting access to the internet to the employees).

The lists may be used free of charge but companies, institutions and government agencies have to register by signing a usage contract. The usage contract can be obtained by sending mail to info (at) shalla.de.
The lists are for internal use only and must not be given away to any third party."

In my perception having a free alternativa (not limited in time) is a good leverage for the product (we did start with that and then we changed with komodia after seeing that the product was fine for us, but you cannot decide in 20 days time).

Regards

Giorgio

[Jinhee]

We now allow any kind of commercial usage of NxFilter v4. So people can make another product based on NxFilter. And rebrand it. We can't include anything for non-commercial or something not compatible to our license. And we also included 20 user free license for Jahaslist for home users and small business users. If it's a small company that would be enough. Commercial, non-commercial, we don't restrict. We will only sell bigger licenses.

However, we also support Shallalist on v3. We will not remove it. But NxFilter v3 has a different license policy. It's only for non-commercial use and the redistribution of a modified version is not allowed. So if they have bigger number of users and if they want to use a free blacklist, they can stay with v3. We will update it if there's a bug, but any major update will be done on v4 only.

So it's better for everybody. If it's for NxFilter + Shallalist user, there's no change. They can use v3. If it's for new users but working on a small site they can use v4 for free. If it's a bigger site and if they want to buy our license we welcome it. But if they want to go back to v3 and Shallalist we are not going to stop them. And even if it's a business user they can sell NxFilter v4 under their product name including our free 20 user license for Jahaslist.

I hope this can give people more business opportunity and see more NxFilter running over the world. Whatever the brand is, it is NxFilter and eventually it will benefit us.

[Jinhee]

The free Jahaslist license on v4 works like this,

1. When you install it first time, you can use Jahaslist for 30 days without any restriction.

2. After 30 days, it becomes 20 user license.

[John Estep]

Will we be able to just apply like any other update when you fully release this? So my 3.4.9 to 4?

[Jinhee]

Existing Jahaslist, Cloudlist users will not be affected. Just the same process of updating.

[Christian McDonald]

So don't include Shallalist. Including it and supporting it are not the same thing. My organization has explicit written permission from Shalla to use their list (We are a school). Why can't we use V4 of NxFilter. This is a classic bait-and-switch. We will be looking elsewhere for our filtering needs.

[Jinhee]

You have been using v3 so far. And we don't stop it or remove it. Then what's the difference? You don't need to use v4 to use Shallalist and we don't remove any feature on v3. And we added 20 user free commercial license on v4 and we allow our business users to sell it even. There are actually people working on a commercial product based on NxFilter for home user market. And they want to pay nothing to us. And now they can without worrying about any licensing problem.

I understand that you don't want to spend money but wanting to use a filtering product. But for us there are too many of them. Of course we have some paid users. Some of them think that it's just worth it and some of them even think that they want to support us. And we also want to see people making business based on NxFilter and eventually buying some license from us so that we can continue NxFilter and provide people something free. So for now, us and all these paid users are actually supporting all the free options.

Don't blame us for not making everything free. We can't. But we don't remove any free options we supported so far.

[John Estep]

Just updated to 4.0.2 and all is working ;)

[Edan Pedragosa]

Hi!

Just saw the update today and it's sad that educational institutions can no longer take advantage of freely available lists.

I hope shallalist can still be made available for schools.

as from Shalla license, it says:

Companies, Institutions and Goverment:

The usage of Shalla's Blacklists within companies, institutions or government agencies are considered commercial usage in the sense that it is not private but part of the business (restricting access to the internet to the employees).
The lists may be used free of charge but companies, institutions and government agencies have to register by signing a usage contract. The usage contract can be obtained by sending mail to info (at) shalla.de.
The lists are for internal use only and must not be given away to any third party.

So, if you have a usage contract from shallalist.de then there should be no problem.

Anyway, I will stick with 3.4.9-p1 for now until it no longer works for our needs and a free alternative pops up again!

[Jinhee]

I know Shallalist license as I have already read it many times. But I don't think everybody follows their license. Some people are already in license violation by not obtaining the usage contract even though they have to. And some people might be using it for their commercial service thinking that nobody can find about it. But if they maintain a commercial service something like a cloud based DNS filtering service then at least we can find out based on their reporting IP. We just pretend that we don't know anything about it. But once it gets bigger and bigger, people would find out. Not just us.

Yes. You can stick to v3. We don't go back to Shallalist with v4. Even the people who started with v4 can downgrade it to v3. But we explicitly stated that nobody can use v3 for any commercial purpose and that's why we can keep Shallalist there. We don't have any reason for any license violation at the moment with v3 and v4. And our users also don't have any reason for license violation with any party if they comply to our simple license.

And I don't understand that why people saying that they can't use Shallalist anymore. You can use Shallalist on v3 as you did so far. Nobody stops it. v4 is a business friendly version. Do you do business with NxFilter? It's been always against our license not just for Shallalist license. I know that there are people paying money to Shallalist to make their filtering business. Go with v4 if it's for business and if you want to use Shallalist and pay nothing to anybody go with v3.

[aam...@sig.com.gt]

Hello,

Thank you for the great work, i have one question, i dont use blacklist, i use a block all rule and unblock by white list, do i still need a licence for a blacklist?

The reason i dont use a black list its beacause im am based in central america and 90% of the web sites of the region are not categorized in any list.

Best regards,

[Jinhee]

No. You don't need to. There's an option for 'No system categories'. Try that.

[aam...@sig.com.gt]

Thank you very much,

Best Regards

[Edan Pedragosa]

Yes, we can still use V3 with Shallalist.

We will just miss the critical updates and patches in the future.

Anyway, we shall stick with V3 for now.

Thanks!

[Jinhee]

Bug fix will be done on v3. But I don't think there's a known bug on v3 and there are everything you need already.

[Edan Pedragosa]

Thank you Jinhee for the assurance that there will still be bug fixes and patches for V3.

[Edan Pedragosa]

Hi! Is there a way to turn off the Upgrade Notification to latest version in V3.4.9?

I'm always tempted to upgrade!

The only thing that stops me is that NxFilter still need a client to block application. If that can be done without a client, I'm all the way for it.

[Jinhee]

You can modify dashboard.jsp to turn it off on GUI at least.

  // Version check.

  checkNewVersion();

Comment it out.

And you don't need to update your client when you migrate to v4. The new agents are using the same protocol as old ones.

[Edan Pedragosa]

Thank you for pin-pointing where to comment it out. Sorry for my being noob.

Anyway, the very reason why the client won't work well is that psiphon and some other proxy bypassing tools now offer android and ios apps to bypass the filter.

As there is no NxClient available for android and ios, and the requirement of installing those software to client devices takes more time, it defeats the purpose of filtering.

If there is no more need for NxClient and the application control can be done right from NxFilter GUI, that I think will the best option. Just my thought. I hope and trust that you can make it available in the future!

Thanks again!

Best regards!

[Michael Mast]

The purpose of the client is to have code, running as admin/root, on the device that will apply your application control settings. Otherwise there is no way to control what applications people have on their devices. In short, there is no way to control a device by just the dashboard.

[Edan Pedragosa]

Fortigate has been doing a great job at detecting those proxy bypass applications with their application sense/control feature. Take note that it does not need a client to do that, it inspects the traffic at the packet level.

So there must be a way, it is just way to expensive for us though.

[Jinhee]

So called deep packet inspection. You need to have some special hardware inspecting all the packets going through your network. That's why Fortigate is so much expensive. If I talk about this kind of thing someone would think of using PCAP library and would say that it's an open source. Yes. That's why you get all those bottle neck problem with these open source packet monitoring tools. Sadly, we have no way of doing that on DNS level. But good thing is that's why NxFilter is lighter than others and not causing any slowdown in your network.

And to me, you are trying to restrict your users too much. In most countries, you only can monitor the traffic if they are on your network and if they use your hardwares. For example, if someone is using company laptop then you can do filtering. Or someone is using a personal Android device on your network consuming your bandwidth then you can do filtering. But in the 2nd case it should be on network level. You can't install anything on their personal belongings. In some countries, you may do that yet. But in the end it will be banned by law. And that's why we don't think it's crucial to have Android/iPhone apps.

Even if we have a way of doing that, it's not on DNS level. Not possible.

[Edan Pedragosa]

 "And to me, you are trying to restrict your users too much. In most countries, you only can monitor the traffic if they are on your network and if they use your hardwares."

We only restrict them when they are using our network/resources. I also don't believe on installing client software to their devices as it gives the IT department more work to do. There's just no feasible choice at the moment but to use a nxlogon/nxclient on their laptop devices and disallow them access via their mobile phones or tablets.

I do hope that something will pop-up later allowing us to stop those bypass tools from circumventing the filter, at the network level, without installing a client to user's devices.

This software @ V3 is still doing great for me (except for the bypass tool lurking around) as I don't want to go back to my old squidguard setup yet until it is really worthy to do so.

[Ty Roork]

We have been using V4.0.5 for 30 days at a small vision care office with 15 users and the software has just now stopped working, stating "Invalid License". Why is it not a 20 user license at this point?

[John Estep]

Ty, see the text :

"Jahaslist is the default blacklist option for NxFilter and we ship 30 days trial license in NxFilter package. Once you install NxFilter, you can use Jahaslist and NxClassifier that is the auto-classifier for Jahaslist without any restriction for 30 days. After the 30 days of trial, if you want to continue with Jahaslist you can buy its license."

You probably still have it set to Jahaslist

[Jinhee]

You can use Jahaslist for free when you have just under 20 users. But v4.0.5 read the license only once when it starts so there's no auto-switch from the trial license to the free license. We have seen several people having confusion on this. We already made v4.0.6 switching it automatically.

[Ty Roork]

I installed NxFilter v4.0.5 for a small vision care office with 15 users and after 30 days it's license switched automatically to zero users and stated “Invalid License”. After that I was told “if you want to continue with Jahaslist you can buy its license.” So they bought a license. So just how is it true to say “You can use Jahaslist for free when you have just under 20 users”? Was there actually a way to get a free 20 user license? Don't get me wrong, I believe NxFilter & Jahaslist are well worth paying for, I just don't understand what you're talking about when you say it's free for less than 20 users.....What exactly is free? Very confusing...

[Jinhee]

What I am saying is that you have to restart it to reset the license. It's because we read the license or set the license just once when it starts for the performance. And there were several people like you having confusion so we made it switching automatically from v4.0.6. I guess you had the problem with v4.0.5 and didn't restart it.

[Ty Roork]

It would have been nice if I had been informed that all I had to do was restart it when I made my original post of March 31. Why didn't John Estep or anyone else inform me of this? John Estep was correct though, the web site clearly states  "After the 30 days of trial, if you want to continue with Jahaslist you can buy its license." http://nxfilter.org/p3/jahaslist/

No big deal, your product is well worth the price this office is paying for it, but the conflicting info I've experienced here might influence me to not recommend it at other offices I deal with though.

[Jinhee]

We have this one on our tutorial though,

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. NxFilter v4

You can use it for any purpose including commercial one. You can build your own product based on it. Modification, rebranding, redistribution is permitted by its license. Trial license for Jahaslist for 30 days without restriction and free 20 user license for Jahaslist included.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I don't know John Estep. He doesn't work for us. Just a user for NxFilter trying to help you. You read this posting and you even posted a question here. Why couldn't you wait for us answering you? You have sent me a private message and you still didn't wait for me. And we assumed that people would restart it first if they have some problem with a license. Of course, it was a wrong assumption so we fixed the problem by auto-switching.

Was it Sud******k Communications? I will get you a refund.

[Jinhee]

If anyone read this posting and bought our license by misunderstanding send me an email using 'support at nxfilter.org'. We will refund you.

[John Estep]

As I said in our private message, I was only a user and you should contact Jinhee