Configuring a DNS Category

DNS categories may be user-defined or predefined. You can either create user-defined categories or use predefined categories to filter domain names.

Context

The application scenarios of user-defined categories and predefined categories are as follows:

Predefined categories

A large number of common domain names are already added to predefined categories. You can easily manage the accessible and inaccessible domain name categories.

Predefined DNS categories are preset in the system and the same as predefined URL categories. Predefined DNS categories cannot be created, deleted, or renamed. However, you can not add user-defined domain names to the predefined DNS categories.
User-defined categories

The predefined categories may not cover new websites. You can create user-defined categories based on special filtering requirements or to enhance predefined DNS categories.

Manually Configuring a User-Defined Category

Choose Object > DNS Category.

Click Add to create a user-defined category.

You can also create a user-defined category in the DNS filtering profile. Choose Object > Security Profiles > DNS Filtering. In the DNS filtering level in the DNS filtering profile, click Add DNS Category next to the User-defined Category.

Parameter	Note
Name	Name of a user-defined DNS category
Description	Description of a user-defined DNS category
Host	Host rule, which can be in exact, prefix, suffix, or keyword matching mode. A host rule must meet the following requirements: The value is a string of 4 to 255 characters and cannot contain slashes (/), backslashes (\), number signs (#), double quotation marks ("), or question marks (?). The asterisk () can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a domain name rule: When it appears at the beginning, it is a wildcard character that indicates suffix matching, such as abc. When it appears in the middle, it is a common character, such as *abc*. When it appears at the end, it is a wildcard character that indicates prefix matching, such as abc. When it appears at both the beginning and the end, it is a wildcard character and indicates keyword matching, such as *abc. If a domain name rule contains a wildcard character, it must contain at least three consecutive characters except the wildcard character, such as abc, *abc, ab, and ab. If a domain name rule does not contain any wildcard character, the domain name is matched in exact matching mode. In this case, the domain name rule must contain at least four consecutive characters, such as abcd*.

Click OK.
Click Commit on the upper right of the web page.
The changed DNS category does not take effect immediately. You need to click Commit on the upper right of the web page to activate the configuration. To save time, commit the configuration after you complete all operations on DNS category.

Follow-up Procedure

You can clone an existing user-defined DNS category and modify it to create a similar one.

Choose Object > DNS Category.
Select a DNS category and click Copy.
Enter the content of the new category in Copy DNS Category and click OK.