Should we be looking at Smoothwall?

[jlucas]

Hi everyone

 

Its starting to be apparent our current in-house filtering and web content control isn't going to be good enough for the influx of BYOD and iPads we're getting.

 

We currently run a couple of squid proxy servers with Dans Guardian and a ZeroShell captive portal.

 

This current system sends staff/students to the relavent proxy at SWGFL and allows a basic BYOD captive portal facility.

 

The BYOD stuff is causing us problems. We can't re-direct secure traffic through the portal without it coming up with a man in the middle attack or just failing to connect entirely.

 

Would a solution like smoothwall sort this problem?

What other options should we be looking at?

 

Obviously its going to be an uphill struggle convincing those with the money that we're going to have to start paying for something that we were previously providing for free.

 

Just a bit of research and some info gathering to see if I'm going down the right street!

 

Thanks

James

[EmperorPeng]

BLOXX is a good solution but it's around £3K per year. Can't help you with BYOD though as we don't allow any personal devices at all. If it's not school equipment it doesn't get anywhere near our network and that includes external trainers or people coming in to do talks or assemblies.

[mrbios]

Lightspeed, Bloxx and smoothwall are your best and most popular solutions within education. Each has their pros and cons, some more than others.

 

Cost wise, Lightspeed are the cheapest by quite a way if you buy into a hosted solution such as the one @SchoolsBroadband provide. Just be aware that not all functionality the documentation would tell you about is currently working via a hosted solution (though I'm hoping things such as the web zones won't be long!) it's worth taking a very good look at all 3 though to see what best fits your needs.

Edited December 4, 2013 by mrbios