Unison™ Content Filtering Service filters inappropriate content, using leading content categorization databases to check website requests. Because it is tightly integrated with Laptop Optimization and Web Fidelity Service, it adds no latency to network performance when used in combination with these other services.
Unison Content Filtering Service Features
Scalability and Flexibility
Designed as a cost-optimized, highly scalable and flexible solution, Bytemobile’s Unison Content Filtering Service allows operators to add content control to their service offerings without having to change their existing network architecture. As the number of subscribers grows, capacity can be added proportionally.
Full Mobility Support
Unison Content Filtering Service supports full mobility, allowing content control to be applied ubiquitously to WLAN and mobile networks.
Powerful Databases
Unison Content Filtering Service works with market-leading classified databases that are updated at an operator-defined frequency. A typical content database currently monitors more than 40 categories of inappropriate content, filters nearly one billion web pages, supports over 65 languages, and covers more than 200 countries.
Operator Customization
With Unison Content Filtering Service, operators can create unique packages and configurations and customize content filtering policies as desired to meet business objectives. These might include taking advantage of market opportunities, meeting regulatory requirements or selectively blocking mobile advertising. Filters can be provisioned on either a user or a user-group basis, allowing operators maximum flexibility when targeting subscribers with different service packages.
Multiple-Operator Support
Unison Content Filtering Service is specifically designed to support simultaneous use by multiple operators. This can be any combination of network operators and MVNOs. Configuration is maintained and applied separately for each operator. Appropriate security measures are used to ensure that each operator has a private, protected configuration.
Usability-Enhancing Utilities
A full reporting tool available for Unison Content Filtering Service allows operators to produce reports on collected data. Other utility features that enhance the service's usability include
- Real-Time Event Reporting Feature, which displays the status of each filtered user request in a tabular format
- Historical Event Reporting Feature, which generates various graphical and tabular reports on filter requests for a specified time frame
- URL Test Tool, which provides the ability to test specific URLs for a particular user against the existing operator's filtering configuration
- Email Reporting System, which can be configured to send periodic content filtering reports to authorized personnel
Embedded URLs
Embedded URLs pose a complex problem for content filtering applications, as they require the extraction of filterable URLs from otherwise non-filterable ones. Unison Content Filtering Service uses a unique pre-processing mechanism to decode and process such URLs.
Dynamic Categorization Capability
Unison Content Filtering Service supports the ability to dynamically analyze and categorize new websites, thereby allowing operators to effectively deal with newly discovered sites that are not yet rated in the categorization database.
External Policy Enforcement Points
Within a Unison integrated services deployment, the handset or laptop optimization services behave as a policy enforcement point (PEP) that feeds filtering requests to Unison Content Filtering Service, which is the policy decision point (PDP). The service can also accept filtering requests from external PEPs via ICAP, a widely used internet protocol. This allows it to serve as a common PDP for all traffic, regardless of whether or not the traffic traverses the Unison node.
