License Limits

As most IT buyers know, software purchases usually come with licensed limits. It's no different with secure web gateways and web proxies. Typically the anti-malware and URL filtering licenses are licensed by the number of users in the organization. For most of these platforms, they determine the number of users by counting IP addresses or unique user logins. After the license limit has been reached, each vendor's products may behave a little differently.

Some vendors will send out nag notices, letting you know you've reached your license limit, others will reduce their functionality (maybe block malware), but not content by policy, and still others, just stop blocking altogether for those users over the license limit.

Depending on what type of organization you work for any of those could be acceptable, but for certain organizations, (like schools), to stop blocking altogether might not be an acceptable risk, especially when there might be complaining parents. So make sure your software does what you want it to do if you reach a licensed limit. (Also make sure it isn't a way for users to get around your corporate policy - I heard rumors that some students at a school generated a program to use up DHCP IP addresses to reach the license limit on their filtering software, so the "overage" IP addresses could browse freely).