I'm going to assume that this was a request for more information on netsweeper and not a request for how to bypass it (since everyone knows that most filters don't filter SSL or Proxy traffic)...
If you simply want to disable, or rather circumvent a web filter; why not just try one of the millions of free web proxies, I'll link to a few here:
http://www.pagemod.com/ -or- (tunneling) http://www.pagemod.com:1234/ -or-
http://pmod.info/A simple google search "
Web Based Proxy" will show you some other sites.
Now, NetSweeper itself (
Available Here) was first produced in 1999; it boasts the smallest footprint of all tools in its class. It is not just found in schools; in fact you can find it on a lot of the county and government machines (even libraries) as their filter of choice.
Instead of URL Filtering (which alternatively one could do without wasting thousands of dollars by just adding entries to the hosts file in a windows environment) it blocks content based on keywords in the loading documents. The programmed AI categorizes and classifies webpages into segments of what it deams accessible based on the programed rules.
They have included a bit of information for developers (well, because in an IT environment every dev wants to know what's going on behind the curtains on their machines) which you can read
here which delves into the categorization matching that the product provides.
Instead of stealing information from their "How it Works" page, I'll leave you all here with the above link; it'll tell you far more information that me just nitpicking with plagiarism

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