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F-ALI
F-ALI
Explorer II
April 22, 2025
Question

Issue with Blocking YouTube and Affecting Google Docs

  • April 22, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 2411 views

Hi everyone,

I’ve configured my FortiGate to allow access to Google Docs only for certain users. However, I noticed that those users were still able to access YouTube.

Upon investigation, I found that Google Docs and YouTube share some of the same IP addresses, which makes it difficult to block one without affecting the other.

When I created a policy to block YouTube, it ended up blocking Google Docs too.

Has anyone found a way to allow Google Docs while effectively blocking YouTube?

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

youtube_IP.png

3 replies

AEK
SuperUser
AEK
SuperUser
April 22, 2025

Hi Ali

Don't use FQDN for that. Use ISDB as destination address instead.

AEK
    F-ALI
    F-ALIAuthor
    Explorer II
    April 22, 2025

    Hi AEK ,

    thanks for your input , but after check the internet service list , there's no service for YouTube

    ISDB.png

    F-ALI
    F-ALIAuthor
    Explorer II
    April 22, 2025

    Any suggestions would be appreciated.

    AEK
    SuperUser
    AEK
    SuperUser
    April 22, 2025

    My bad. Use app control instead to block YouTube application.

    AEK
      F-ALI
      F-ALIAuthor
      Explorer II
      April 23, 2025

      Hi AEK,

      Thanks for your suggestion. I gave it a try, but it wasn't effective in this case.

      As a temporary solution, I applied traffic shaping rules to limit YouTube traffic to 200 Kbps per IP.

      With this in place, Google Sheets is now accessible, although YouTube videos load very slowly due to the reduced bandwidth.

      Additionally, I plan to block YouTube entirely by mapping www.youtube.com to an invalid IP address in the hosts file or via a custom DNS record on our DNS server.
      This should effectively prevent access by resolving the domain to an incorrect address.

        ArminF
        ArminF
        New Member
        June 13, 2025

        Got the same issue. Wanted a dedicated web profile with App,DNS, etc filters.
        But the ISDB routes youtube.com and googlevideos.com into the Google Gmail collection.
        As soon as i remove the Google Gmail it works but then routes all google meet, mail traffic through my default web police with all the filters applied. 
        Is there are possiblity to overwrite those ISDB ranges maybe?


        Thanks

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