Adding sites to custom categories

When adding sites to a custom category, you can add hostnames, IP addresses or address ranges, or URL paths.


	Note Certain characters have significance to the pattern matching mechanism, and should be preceded with a backslash (\). These characters are: [ ] { } \ + *

Hostnames

Enter hostnames without a protocol, for example: abc.com. This will match:

Any resource at the domain, using any protocol (for example http://abc.com, https://abc.com, ftp://abc.com).

Any subdomains of abc.com using any protocol, for example www.abc.com, 123.abc.com, www.123.abc.com.

You can use a wildcard (*) within a hostname or at the beginning of a hostname. Wildcards at the beginning of a hostname match any hostname that ends with the string you enter, for example *abc.com matches 123abc.com, and any subdomains (for example www.123.abc.com, www.xxx.123abc.com).

A wildcard at the beginning of a hostname, followed by a dot (*.abc.com) matches any subdomains of abc.com (for example 123.abc.com), but not the abc.com domain itself.


	Note Wildcards placed at the end of the string are removed.

URL paths

Any address with a slash (/) following the hostname or IP address is treated as a URL path (for example www.abc.com/, www.abc.com/mysite).

If you specify a URL path, it is treated as the start of a path, and matches anything beginning with the string you enter (for example, www.abc.com/mysite matches www.abc.com/mysite/folder/page.htm).

Note: URL paths will not match for HTTPS requests unless SSL decryption is being performed. For HTTPS requests, the full path is not provided to the proxy.

IP addresses

Enter IPv4 IP addresses or ranges in one of the following formats:

Explicit address: a single address. Example: 12.13.14.15

Explicit range: 2 addresses separated by a dash (-). Example: 12.13.14.15-12.13.14.99 (a space before and after the dash is allowed, but not required)

Subnet: An address followed by a slash (/) and the number of bits, which is a number between 1 and 32. Example: 12.13.14.15/24

Subnet with subnet mask: an address followed by a slash (/) and a netmask. Example: 12.13.14.15/255.255.255.0


	Important If you have entered an IP address range, subnet, or subnet mask, be sure your entry does not have unintended impact. When a policy is applied, all addresses are handled the same way. For example, if the category is blocked, all qualifying addresses are blocked.

IP addresses and ranges are used to match the resolved address of a requested hostname, using any protocol and port.

Ports

If you include a port number that is the standard port number for the protocol being used (for example port 80 for HTTP, port 443 for HTTPS), the port number is ignored and the entry is treated as described above. If the port number is a non-standard port for the protocol being used, the proxy will match only URLs that include the port number.

For example, if you enter www.abc.com:8080/, then http://www.abc.com:8080/mysite will match, but http://www.abc.com/mysite will not.