U-Haul International Moves Forward with 8e6’s Filtering and Reporting Solutions

Profile

Now celebrating its 60th anniversary, U-Haul International is the pioneer in the do-it-yourself moving and storage industry, serving corporate and consumer audiences through more than 14,000 independent dealers and 1,350 company-operated centers in the US and Canada. U-Haul is also a leading provider of self-storage facilities, the world’s largest installer of permanent trailer hitches and the world’s largest single-brand Yellow Pages advertiser.

Challenge

Like the rest of the transportation industry, U-Haul needs a fast and reliable communications infrastructure to quickly and efficiently serve clients on the move. Previous to installing 8e6 Technologies’ solutions, the U-Haul Web Team was experiencing problems with employees overusing Instant Messaging (IM), streaming media, and spending time visiting unproductive sites. Not only was the company’s network infrastructure unprotected from viruses and spyware when users inadvertently downloaded unauthorized files, but their activities diminished bandwidth.

“When we first started looking for a device, we required that it be a hardened appliance, and it had to do pass-by packet inspection — not pass through. We didn’t want any of our users to not be able to get to the Internet to do their job because of a system going down,” says Mike Saur, Network Engineer. At the time, the company’s firewall was blocking sites only by IP address. This created problems when the sites changed or added an IP address. “We had no good way to report on where and what our users were doing on the Internet,” Saur says. “When managers asked for reports, all we could really give them were IP addresses, which meant nothing to them.”

Solutions

The U-Haul Web Team found 8e6 Technologies’ R3000 perfectly fit its needs as a pass-through hardware appliance. “The pass-by of traffic instead of pass-through was a major plus,” says Saur. “We also appreciated the database of daily up-dated Web sites and the fact that the R3000 is a true appliance—not a software package on a Windows OS.“ Mike Matlock, Network Engineer, agrees. “If the product were to go down or lose power, our Internet resources would not be lost.”

The R3000 Internet Filter provides scalable, high-speed filtering solutions for businesses. Optimized as a stand-alone appliance, the R3000 easily integrates into any network without bottlenecks and downtime. Its features include Real-Time Probes, which allow an administrator to monitor a user’s Internet usage in real-time and “X-Strikes” Blocking, where administrators can set criteria for blocking a user’s access to “unacceptable” Internet sites.

The U-Haul Web Team also employs the Enterprise Reporter (ER), an optional companion to the R3000. As a stand-alone appliance that reports on Internet usage, the ER does not compromise filtering speed/performance or any other server/network functions. The ER is built on a dedicated MySQL server database that works in conjunction with the R3000, using proprietary 8e6 architecture. This allows it to generate detailed or summarized reports in a fraction of the time of competitive products.

Result

“In it’s most basic configuration, the R3000 does everything that we need and more. Coupled with the Enterprise Reporter, we now have a total enterprise solution that blocks, filters, and reports on all of our internet usage with minimal effort,” says Saur. What’s more, the U-Haul Web Team found it very simple to integrate the 8e6 solutions into the company’s network infrastructure. Says Matlock, “Most Internet filtering products available were way too complex and intrusive. We unpacked the R3000 and Enterprise Reporter and had them running within 30 minutes — Set it and forget it.”