LGfL 2.0 Problems

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

Hi All

 

Below is an email I sent to the Network Managers in my LEA (Bexley). I'm not happy, they're not happy, several support companies we've spoken to are not happy, which leads me to believe that other schools within London may also be a bit miffed.

 

Hi All

 

On the 19th I attended the LGfL 2.0 meeting at Atomwide.

 

You should all have received the LGfL Transition Documentation, which was discussed at the meeting.

 

I'd like to draw your attention to page 6 of the Essential Technical Guide for Schools v1.01, which states;

 

'If remote access to the school network is required, raise a support case for the RAV3 secure remote access service. ‘LOGMEIN’ and any other type of remote access product is not allowed on LGfL2. RAV3 is supported and is included in LGfL2 at no additional cost'

 

I'm not sure if any of you are offering remote access to Staff or Students, or if you require remote support for your MIS systems etc, but for me this is quite a big problem.

 

Both Chris Green and myself have separately raised this issue with Brian Durrant at LGfL, and have so far had identical responses; LGfL has now decided that security is important, and feels it can limit our access as it sees fit, without warning, explanation or consultation.

 

I'm not sure how you feel about that, but I'm not too happy. Whatever services we have running on LGfL 1.0 should continue to work on LGfL 2.0, and at no point should our ISP be telling us what we should or should not be doing on our £30k internet connections.

 

Brian has said that there may be a solution, but he will not be able to discuss it with us until later this week.

 

If this does affect you, please let me know, and I'll let you know as soon as I have more info.

 

For anyone who would like to discuss this with Brian, his email address is [email protected]

 

I'll arrange another meeting for some time in the next couple of weeks.

 

Shaun Neighbour

Network Manager

Blackfen School for Girls

[email protected]

Tel: 0208 303 1887 ext 3115

 

I've attached the PDF to this message.

 

Please let me know how you feel about this. I'm meeting Brian on Friday.

LGfL2 0 Transition Technical Guide - v1 01.pdf

[chris_uk]

Hi,

 

I'm in Croydon and we are going through the same thing. I had a long call open with the support team when I submitted our MIPS to them. (Excel file is on support.lgfl.org.uk) When I submitted our MIPs I was told that I wouldn't be allowed to have the SSH ports that I requested open. A little while later I had another support person come on who was very helpfull and actually asked why i wanted them etc. Once I had explained to him why and what we used it for he said it shouldn't be a problem. But he also explained a huge amount more.

 

If you have concerns about it explain it to them on a support request, they do listen.

 

Chris

[glennda]

I know a lot of schools in West Sussex who are looking to jump ship from our LEA contracts which involve Atomwide - don't think its necessarily Atomwide in our case (although it is partly to do with them). I know for one i am looking to move away and from talking to suppliers other schools are looking to it as well.

[Soulfish]

We were one of the first LGfL 2.0 schools being a new build Academy. We were originally going for a plain virgin/A.N.Other fibre connection, but shortly before I started they agreed to take a LGfL 2.0 connection on the condition that it was like a standard fibre connection - unfiltered and unrestricted. Of course once activated we found that as you say LogMeIn and other remote access protocols are blocked. If we'd known this in advance we wouldn't have taken up the contract.

 

It's a huge issue when trying to get support for third parties as LogMeIn/GoToAssist/TeamViewer are all standard remote support tools for Capita or another other major IT company. It's an issue that I've also been meaning to raise, but unfortunately have had little time to. If your meeting with Brian feel free to add my voice to the protests. PM me for contact details.

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

Hi Chris_UK. I'm going to insist that we're put on an "Option 2" type service, so hopefully won't need to worry about MIPS..........

 

Glennda - I'm also looking at other suppliers prior to Friday's meeting.

 

Soulfish - If there's any chance that you could fire a quick email over to Brian - The more customers that complain, the more he'll realise that it is a problem, and not just one LEA kicking up a fuss.

[esucmn]

If you have concerns about it explain it to them on a support request, they do listen.

 

Oh really? I have contacted support on so many occasions (at least 10) to get our internal addresses recorded correctly, explaining in writing and on the phone in words of one syallable and STILL they haven't got it correct. They are a complete shambles.

 

We are also concerened about atomwide and their policies. They are causing our school massive support issues. They have stopped mass emails. They are going to stop remote support by third parties. They simply can't seem to work with Fronter to get USO logins to work correctly when students have previously had accounts at different schools. We too are starting to look at other providers and jump screaming from the LGFL 2.0 ship, because the idea of having to deal with this company on a daily basis is, quite frankly, horrifying.

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

I've been given some very competitive pricing for 100Mb and 200Mb from BT. Also, Synetrix' price to 1Gb is comparable to what LGfL are offering.

 

I'm still waiting on pricing from Virgin, but jumping ship is looking to be a very cost effective option.

[esucmn]

Likewise - Although Virgin are ammusing me in a bad way. I had to phone them 3 times to get the education manager to call me back, and he still hasn't emailed me the prices. If the sales teama re this bad, what are support like?!?

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

I too am a bit concerned about Virgin's involvement in this project. I read a really nice quote yesterday;

 

BT are ####, but everyone else is worse.

 

We'll have to see how this all pans out. I'm expecting that LGfL will not be too happy is we decide to leave. I don't think they'd have much of a court case as we've not paid them, they've not been close to meeting their installation schedule, and are being a right royal pain. But they could make any transition very awkward............

[evil-tom]

I know that some places have moved to .ac.uk domains with ja.net They know what they are doing.

[inglesmum]

... it's nice to know that others are sharing your woe.... as the lovely Mr Soron said when I asked why the Online Parental Reporting had been pulled from Y11 "I feel your pain".....

 

... then when asking LGFL why the instal date is as tangible as a carrot on a stick I got this back: The installation and migration may be expected to take place towards the latter end of the range of the dates indicated; however VMB is once again reviewing its programme and while most will not alter, there may yet be changes in some localities.

 

...and how mad is this... to let new students continue using their USOs a Fronter logins I have been told to export all the students records to a text file - find the USOs ones - add in their USO password and upload.... in essence creating a pseudo USO/Fronter login.... like I have all the time in the world to do that!!!!!

 

...and then the 'both LGFL1 and LGFL2.0 will run in tandem until all issues are resolved'..... to 'you will have 3 days for the switchover to take place'.... but we wont tell you when it will be as its not something that needs any planning or such!!!!!!!

 

Baaahhhhhhhhh )

[esucmn]

...and how mad is this... to let new students continue using their USOs a Fronter logins I have been told to export all the students records to a text file - find the USOs ones - add in their USO password and upload.... in essence creating a pseudo USO/Fronter login.... like I have all the time in the world to do that!!!!!

 

Does this imply they intend to break the link between Fronter and USOs?

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

I believe their plan is to exclusively use USO for Fronter Logins.

[esucmn]

that's what I understood, hense the question

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

I forgot to mention - LGfL/Atomwide's solution to this was to offer an improved version of RAV3............

[inglesmum]

... re the Fronter/USO thing.... a chap from Atomwide said that the way forward is probably to use USOs for Fronter... My issue with this is that you need to login to LGFL - access the services and then click the Fronter link.... this 'totally' does not work on our network setup (and is far too long winded unless we link our AD to the USOs!!!!) hence the creation of the pseudo accounts.....

[talksr]

Shaun_Dark_Lord, I too have been very concerned about this and have also emailed Brian, no response yet.

I am based in Tower Hamlets and manage a 3 form entry primary there. All of our support comanies use LogmeIn and Teamviewer so these changes would have a huge effect on us.

 

Lets hope they can sort themselves out.

I totally agree when you say: "Whatever services we have running on LGfL 1.0 should continue to work on LGfL 2.0, and at no point should our ISP be telling us what we should or should not be doing on our £30k internet connections."

 

Lets see what happens.

[glennda]

I've been given some very competitive pricing for 100Mb and 200Mb from BT. Also, Synetrix' price to 1Gb is comparable to what LGfL are offering.

 

I'm still waiting on pricing from Virgin, but jumping ship is looking to be a very cost effective option.

 

Take a look at Global AXS for connectivity. They seem pretty good for me.

[talksr]

Are we still able to jump ship so to speak, I thought we would be tied into the contract?

[Shaun_Dark_Lord]

I've just spoken to someone "In the know". Several libraries and a school in our LEA have already jumped ship without penalty. As we have not had an installation, our contract has not started.

[talksr]

Ok, well that is good to know.

I did say in my mail to Brian that since reading the document (I think you have it attached on the original post), it raises a very serious question as to whether the LGFL 2.0 service is going to be a suitable for our school to use at this point. Hopefully he will take the hint, as well as listening to other schools complaints and do something about this.

[InspireICT]

Logmein is a real problem for us, does anyone know whether it's all Logmein products including rescue or is it just the free version that will be blocked?

[adamf]

... re the Fronter/USO thing.... a chap from Atomwide said that the way forward is probably to use USOs for Fronter... My issue with this is that you need to login to LGFL - access the services and then click the Fronter link.... this 'totally' does not work on our network setup (and is far too long winded unless we link our AD to the USOs!!!!) hence the creation of the pseudo accounts.....

 

You don't need to go anywhere near the LGfL site is you want to use USO accounts with Fronter, or at least we don't and never have since we've been using them. We goto http://fronter.com/croydon (in our case) and log straight in with our USO accounts...

[esucmn]

does anyone know whether it's all Logmein products including rescue or is it just the free version that will be blocked?

 

Any type of remote access. See the quote from their "technical" document below:

 

If remote access to the school network is required, raise a support case for the RAV3 secure remote access service. ‘LOGMEIN’ and any other type of remote access product is not allowed on LGfL2

[talksr]

As InspireICT said, LogMeIn will be a real problem for us too. We receive lots of remote support using this and TeamViewer.

I am really quite annoyed that only after subscribing to LGFL 2.0, some considerable months later, we get the LGFL Transition sheet (attached on the original post) mentioning that LogMeIn will be banned.

 

I emailed Brian Durrant to tell him how unhappy I was and to ask what they have to say on the matter. He replied yesterday saying:

 

He was wondering if I had considered taking up the offer of a day of professional delvelopment for LGFL Nominated contacts, which covers a wide range of the services and systems which make up LGFL.

He said it would give me a perfect opportunity to raise the concerns in my email.

 

hmmm.