Filtering issue

[dezt]

We have finally got devolved filtering set up so we can allow staff to get to youtube, but since allowing it, the NED that we have blocked it on for pupils has started allowing it for the kids.

Both the staff and students are on the same network so we have had to allow it in devolved filtering on the pupils group as we are using the curriculum ip range. Has anyone come across this before? Something I did notice when I took it out of the devolved filtering list was that the NED block page was not coming up to block it, it was the LGFL block page instead.

[beneal]

Sounds similar to the problem a while back whereby if a student tried to access a blocked site (on ned), it would sometimes time out, rather than bringing up the block page. After timing out the proxy would fall back from NED to lancs proxy so then allow access to anything allowed in lancs, regardless of NED. We had to customise our proxy pac file to sort it in the end, taking out the failover to lancs proxy. The drawback of that is that if NED dies there's no internet.

[dezt]

Sounds like what is going on here, how would I customize the pac file, we currently use the cleo one.

[beneal]

Download it from http://wwwcache.cleo.net.uk/wpad.dat and just take out the references to lancs proxy (there should be 3). We host ours on our intranet.

[dezt]

I can't get it to download, when i type in the pac file address in the address bar it downloads to my PC, but I don't know what it should be called and what file extension to give it. Could you help with that?

[beneal]

Ours is just called wpad.dat

[SYNACK]

I can't get it to download, when i type in the pac file address in the address bar it downloads to my PC, but I don't know what it should be called and what file extension to give it. Could you help with that?

Its a .dat file (you need to keep the same name for max compatibility) but inside it is just raw text, open it up in something like notepad and you'll be fine.

[dezt]

Thanks guys, i've got it down and removed the entries, now to test it then get it in place.

[dezt]

Now i'm a bit stuck, i've put the wpad.dat file on my webserver and pointed the autoconfig setting to it in gpo, but I can't get to the internet. just to clarify do I just put the webserver address in the setting or do I add wpad.dat at the end.

so should it be http://webserver/ or http://webserver/wpad.dat?

Also, is there anything else I need to configure on the webserver, I did read something about setting a mime type so I did, but it made no difference.

[SYNACK]

Now i'm a bit stuck, i've put the wpad.dat file on my webserver and pointed the autoconfig setting to it in gpo, but I can't get to the internet. just to clarify do I just put the webserver address in the setting or do I add wpad.dat at the end.

so should it be http://webserver/ or http://webserver/wpad.dat?

Also, is there anything else I need to configure on the webserver, I did read something about setting a mime type so I did, but it made no difference.

You'd want the full address with the filename http://webserver.domain.internal/wpad.dat

You would want it in dchp too if you want it to support anything other than domain joined windows clients.

[dezt]

Thanks for all your help, we've been contacted by the westfield centre who told us not to use the pac file but to put the computer name of the NED in the proxy field for the pupils, after doing this it seems to work fine. They wouldn't admit to the documentation telling me to use the pac file rather than the computer name being wrong though.

All working now though.