Srikrishna,
You could very easily accomplish this. One way would be to install ISA
2000. This would be a good way to do this. However, it would require some
cash outlay ( possibly for both hardware and software so probably not a very
interesting suggestion, then ).
Another way that you could accomplish this is to use Group Policy. Now,
since all of your user account objects are in one OU this would require us
to make use of a more advanced area known as Group Filtering. We will get
to that in a second.
And, before we go on this is based on WIN2000 Active Directory with WIN2000
Pro and WINXP Pro clients. If you have WIN9x or WINNT 4.0 clients then this
will not work.
So, we need to do three things in your case:
1) create a 'fake' proxy address
2) disable the users ability to change this
3) use a security group to selectively filter to which user account objects
this will apply
So, for the first 'thing' you would need to create and link the GPO to the
OU that contains all of your user account objects. This should be the easy
part! Simply right click on the OU, select New | Organizational Unit and
then give it a friendly name ( such as 'No Internet Access' ).
Technically, the GPO has just been created. However, it is blank. So we
need to click on the Edit... button and navigate to User Configuration |
Windows Settings | Internet Explorer Maintenance | Connections and then in
the right panel we want to double-click on Proxy Settings. Simply enter in
a fake IP Address ( so, if you have a 192.168.1.x network you might want to
enter 172.16.10.34 or 192.168.56.109 as the proxy address ). This will make
it pretty difficult for your users to access the Internet!
But, this is just the first part. As it stands now they could still
right-click on Internet Explorer, select Properties and go to the
Connections tab and change it to something valid or completely remove it.
We can not allow this. So, we need to make sure that they can not access
the Connections tab. How do we do this? Very simply! Simply navigate to
User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components |
Internet Control Panel and in the right pane we want to enable the 'Disable
the connections page' entry. So, now they can not access that tab to change
the proxy address. This is good. We have just done what you needed to do.
But, there is still one little problem. This is going to affect each and
every domain user account object that directly resides in the OU to which
you have linked the 'No Internet Access' GPO. You do not want the team
leaders to be affected by this GPO. How do we ensure that this happens.
By default, there is a security group called 'Authenticated Users' that has
both READ and APPLY GROUP POLICY rights to each and every GPO that you
create. 'Authenticated Users' contains all user account objects and
computer account objects. We are applying this to the user configuration
side so we are not worried about the computer account objects. However, all
of the user account objects will fall under the Scope of Management of this
GPO. We do not want this ( and I assume that you do not want to move these
'team leaders' to another OU as you probably have other GPOs linked to this
OU ).
So, go to the Security tab of this GPO and remove the Authenticated Users
security group. Simply replace it with a security group ( possibly one that
you will need to create ) that has all of the user account objects that you
want affected by this GPO as members. Do not forget to give this security
group both the READ and APPLY GROUP POLICY rights.
Now you are done.
HTH,
Cary