ISA, Proxy and Radius?

[mcnallyfc]

Hi all

Recently our Local Government IT officials have stated that to limit traffic to their servers they want all schools to introduce a proxy server or equivalent. Our current setup i that all internet traffic goes through a broadband connection to the LG servers.

At the same time i'm looking to potentially move away from their filtering and introducing our own ISA servers to filter our traffic on our own broadband link.

Now firstly i want to setup the ISA server, which although i havent done before i have researched and understand the basic setup. But until we move our broadband link and can utilise the ISA server that way - can it be setup easily enough as a simple proxy server and then at a later date configured properly as how i want to use it?

Finally we are looking at introducing a wireless solution at the school, my preferred method is the installation of a Radius Server, seperated from the main network by the ISA server (so the Radius server sits behind the ISA) I would then want to use PEAP with AD authentification for logging on to the wireless network. Then utilising certificates to verify the identity of the remote server. Has anyone set this up previously? Also are there any free certificates that can be used? i know thawte can purchased etc but with budgets so tight i wonder if other options are there for the certificates.

Sorry if this seems a bit garbled, trying to get my head around things both for now and future!

[glennda]

If you are wanting to limit costs I would suggest possibly using Squid and Dans Guardian. Also i Beleive that Ruckus wireless is supposed to be very good.

Toby

[mcnallyfc]

If you are wanting to limit costs I would suggest possibly using Squid and Dans Guardian. Also i Beleive that Ruckus wireless is supposed to be very good.

Toby

Cheers Toby

I am looking at getting external companies for the wireless - so would they do a complete solution i.e. athentification with AD etc all as part of the setup?

But wouldnt setting up a Radius server ourselves and purchasing certificates be cheaper than a complete provided solution?

[glennda]

Cheers Toby

I am looking at getting external companies for the wireless - so would they do a complete solution i.e. athentification with AD etc all as part of the setup?

But wouldnt setting up a Radius server ourselves and purchasing certificates be cheaper than a complete provided solution?

I Can't tell you that as I have never asked them - i have only seen there kit at conferences and stuff but lots of people rave about it on here.

It might be worth getting in touch with them and finding out what they do in more detail.

[timzim]

You can use ISA Server as just a caching server, which is what I suspect you're being asked to do. The ISA licence is cheap for schools and ISA it's fairly easy to set up, especially if you're only using it for caching (head to isaserver.org for useful info).