"More and more, we rely on the Internet for doing our work," says Gericke, trouble-desk server administrator for the Marine unit, which also runs an e-mail filter that blocks messages with both classified and inappropriate language from coming in and going off the ship. Gericke installed the Websense software and configured the Web filters that run on the unclassified portion of the 13th MEU's network. He also handles e-mail filtering as well as the classified side of the network, which he won't discuss.

The 13th MEU is a special operations unit that supports sensitive missions, like rescuing downed pilots, evacuating embassies and setting up both classified and unclassified networks and telecommunications in a few hours via a satellite van. The precise location of the ship and unit is classified, but the 13th MEU most recently had some troops in Kenya on a humanitarian and civic-assistance mission.

Most 13th MEU Marines on the Bonhomme Richard are limited to 20 minutes a day on the Internet, and can reach only news, military and financial sites. Higher-ranking Marines have no time limit and have access to more Web sites, but are barred from sites with adult or inappropriate content, such as gambling. "The Websense tool helped with our bandwidth issues and made it more manageable," Gericke says of the unclassified network. "It helps a lot with security. It would be harder to keep our operations safe if we didn't have filtering."

Bandwidth isn't taken for granted at sea. The Marine unit is judicious in its bandwidth usage to ensure that personal traffic, such as online banking and downloading large files, doesn't interfere with military operations on the Internet. On a good day, a Marine or Navy user on the Bonhomme Richard gets about 256 Kbps of bandwidth to the Internet from the satellite link provided by the Navy, which also runs its own separate LAN on the ship. "We have a bunch of Internet pipes on board, and you start getting less bandwidth when a lot of people are online," Gericke says. The traffic jams usually occur around 6 to 8 in the evening, he says, and when 250 to 300 users are online, it can cause a noticeable slowdown.

Even with the obvious necessity of the security requirements and bandwidth restrictions, filtering still can be frustrating for Marine users who'd prefer more time and freedom on the Internet. "If someone finds a site that's blocked and doesn't think it should be, I'll take a look and see if the site can go on the permitted list," Gericke says.

Gericke uses Websense's categories, such as "shopping" and "tasteless," to set up the filters. One catch with the software is that it doesn't recognize sites that aren't already in its database, so Gericke manually adds banned sites he discovers on his own. "I get to know what the sites are, and I try to go to half of them and choose what might be bad," he says. Some with seemingly innocuous addresses can slip by, though, he says.

Another trade-off with Websense Enterprise is that, unlike some e-mail filtering tools, it doesn't do real-time monitoring. It just provides reports that show Web behavior after the fact. Downloading Websense's database updates hasn't been easy with the software's automatic download feature. Gericke recently experienced multiple time-outs when trying to get the updates. "I would like to see a Web page where I can authenticate my registration number and then download the database manually," he says.