The Death of School Proxies?

[zag]

So with the launch of proper filtering from ISPs finally are we going to see the death of expensive custom solutions like smootwall and Lightspeed?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25430582

 

I've been a massive supporter of ISP filtering as I believe its such a simple thing to do at network level and people should have choice. Now its working for home connections it cant be long until our business connections get the feature.

 

So do we actually need our local proxies any more?

Edited December 19, 2013 by zag

[sted]

yes as that will just filter out porn (and whatever else the power at bee deem unfit) wont say block youtube or sites you may want blocking for your own reasons

[twin--turbo]

I believe its such a simple thing to do at network level

 

So do we actually need our local proxies any more?

 

1) Have you read the article? Filtering as we all know is by no means simple, the further it is from you the more problematic it gets as you have less control. Say today your PHSE pupils need to access the edinburgh womens site and your on talk talk, your not getting there.

 

 

2) yes we still need our own filtering, the ISP's won't block facebook, youtube, proxy bypass sites, flash games, etc.

 

 

Rob

[tom_newton]

At ISP level, most filtering is DNS based, and not very good.

Here's today's example: BBC News - Porn filters block sex education websites

Yesterday's was about proxy anonymizers.

 

Yes, this *will* get better. As it gets better, it will get more expensive. Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any 2.

 

I suspect in time a lot of this sort of thing will be done in private clouds, by ISPs, with products like Smoothwall and Lightspeed.

[chazzy2501]

Don't forget the websites with extreme political views. Soon to be followed by sites that harm the economy (anything that challenges big corps, so soon 3d printer sites etc.). Then sites that are critical of the government or your local council or inform you of your rapidly diminishing rights as a citizen.

 

it's a slippery slope.

[pcstru]

The problem with network wide filtering is how you balance the needs of various users where those needs may be entirely incompatible. Your school may want something blocked that another school views as valid research material. We already see BT's blocking having unintended consequences, generally the larger the network and the more customers being services by it, the more difficult it will be to get such issues recognised and dealt with. Both these issues suggest that some institutions will find value in providing their own filtering for some time to come.

[X-13]

proxy bypass sites

 

They're blocking those, too. [They didn't mention that when it was proposed...]

 

Which means if you have issues with a proxy server, should you use one, you'll be blocked at the ISP level from searching for a solution.

 

 

The mission creep began before it was even launched.

 

Pornography, extremism, eating disorders, self harm, piracy, how to bypass the filters... I'm really getting fed up of this crap.

[tmcd35]

 

Pornography, extremism, eating disorders, self harm, piracy, how to bypass the filters... I'm really getting fed up of this crap.

 

Silly question - but if you thought it important enough to impose said restrictions, and customers buying your service agree to using under those restrictions, why would you leave a back door open to bypass those restrictions? Kinda makes the implementing said restrictrictions a bit pointless.

[GrumbleDook]

I think we need to rephrase the question. Are we asking (or being asked) if school controlled proxies will disappear (and in this I also include proxies hosted outside of the school and proxies controlled on behalf if schools by LAs, RBCs or Academy groups)?

 

Simple answer ... no. The filters are aimed at a particular client ... Families at home. At the moment the ISPs in question don't have a grasp of educational needs and that is why you have ISPs delivered via RBCs, LAs and specialist companies (SchoolsBroadband, EXA, BT Education, RM, etc).

 

Unless UKCCIS sort themselves out to work harder with the education sector then anything home ISPs try to deliver to schools will seriously fall short. Happy to rant about the DfE lack of support or drive for recent attempts by BSI in this.

[X-13]

and customers buying your service agree to using under those restrictions

 

Agree to what? They're just filtering it by default, you have no say in it. OK you can, sort of, turn it off. [Yep, OFF doesn't mean off any more.]

 

why would you leave a back door open to bypass those restrictions? Kinda makes the implementing said restrictrictions a bit pointless.

 

I know, it DOES make sense.

 

I'm just annoyed that they said they were doing one thing, and now are doing half a dozen extra things they never mentioned.

[sparkeh]

So do we actually need our local proxies any more?

Yes. The purpose of the ISP filters and school filters are different.

IMO ISP are never going to, and shouldn't, cover the range of stuff that a school proxy such as Smoothwall and I can't see this being enforced on business grade connections.

Plus we need local control of the filtering to tailor it to the needs of the schools. As a comparison, we have had a LA controlled filter in the past and they will take our SW box out my cold dead hands.

[localzuk]

At ISP level, most filtering is DNS based, and not very good.

Here's today's example: BBC News - Porn filters block sex education websites

Yesterday's was about proxy anonymizers.

 

Yes, this *will* get better. As it gets better, it will get more expensive. Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any 2.

 

I suspect in time a lot of this sort of thing will be done in private clouds, by ISPs, with products like Smoothwall and Lightspeed.

 

I believe BT use a different approach don't they? They have IP addresses listed at an initial stage, and if the request hits that, the traffic is then redirected to a proxy where it narrows down the request further, comparing the actual URL to their list.

 

That way, they can block single pages rather than just full sites and also prevent all traffic having to go via the proxies.

[pete]

Encourage an ISP who's demonstrated they can't even check that they'd done scheduled maintenance properly to further mess around with our connection?

 

Nope.

 

As others have mentioned, the reason most of us run in-house filtering is because the LA provision was poor and insufficiently flexible/granular for our needs.

[tmcd35]

As a comparison, we have had a LA controlled filter in the past and they will take our SW box out my cold dead hands.

 

We've just wrestled control away from our LA and now have our own Smoothie - difference is like night and day!

 

Agree to what? They're just filtering it by default, you have no say in it. OK you can, sort of, turn it off. [Yep, OFF doesn't mean off any more.]

 

There's always choice. Any ISP enables filters I don't agree to without asking will find their contract terminated fairly quickly and I'll take my custom elsewhere.

[dhicks]

So with the launch of proper filtering from ISPs finally are we going to see the death of expensive custom solutions like smootwall and Lightspeed?

 

No, in fact I'd rather hope that home filtering would work the other way around - a school would make its filtering settings available to parents at home for them to apply to their home connections. Your home connection would be filtered, but you could be sure that there is someone (your child's school's IT team) activly managing the block list, and of course any sites wanted for homework and so on would be available. This strikes me as a fair way of doing things, and also a nice opportunity for Smoothwall, Lightspeed, etc to sell services to the home user.

[sparkeh]

No, in fact I'd rather hope that home filtering would work the other way around - a school would make its filtering settings available to parents at home for them to apply to their home connections. Your home connection would be filtered, but you could be sure that there is someone (your child's school's IT team) activly managing the block list, and of course any sites wanted for homework and so on would be available. This strikes me as a fair way of doing things, and also a nice opportunity for Smoothwall, Lightspeed, etc to sell services to the home user.

Intetresting idea but I fear my entire work time will be taken up with dealing with the filtering requests for the parents of our 600 kids. Surely unworkable?

Plus, as a parent, I want to have control of the filtering on my home Internet connection, not the techs at their school.

[dhicks]

Intetresting idea but I fear my entire work time will be taken up with dealing with the filtering requests for the parents of our 600 kids. Surely unworkable?

Plus, as a parent, I want to have control of the filtering on my home Internet connection, not the techs at their school.

 

If you start with a good system that at least has a reasonably well-catagorised block list (i.e. Smoothwall or similar) you shouldn't get completly inundated with requests. We've had to manually add maybe a couple of dozen sites to our Lightspeed block-list, and most of those were just when we started using it. I, personally, wouldn't want third-party filtering on my home Internet connection either, but many parents don't have the time / expertise to sort out a solution themselves, and using a schools filtering settings seems like a reasonable way of getting a reasonably sane set of blocking settings.

 

I should point out,of course, the we don't nessesarily have to wait for SmoothWall, Lightspeed and others to come up with a solution like this, this is all perfectly doable with a server sat inside the school's network - for a given URL, see if you get the filter's block page, if so add it to its own block list.

[Dos_Box]

Given the problems that RBC's had with perfectly innocent sites becoming filtered overnight I wonder how the ISP's are going to manage if they begin to effect the commercial activities of companies that may be accidentally removed from an ISP's customers?

Would they be able to sue for loss of trade? This could get interesting.

I suppose it is all down to what kind of filtering is applied. Personally I have my kids accounts run via Microsoft's parental controls to make sure that they do not stray where they shouldn't be. That still leaves YouTube and a lot of other 'legitimate' sites though.

Edited December 19, 2013 by Dos_Box

[X-13]

That still leaves YouTube and a lot of other 'legitimate' sites though.

 

Couldn't you use EDU!youtube for home use?

 

Or does that require a level of control that isn't possible without proper filtering?

[Dos_Box]

Couldn't you use EDU!youtube for home use?

 

Or does that require a level of control that isn't possible without proper filtering?

 

Not sure. You do get some pretty good filtering tools with the Microsoft controls, but would have to see how blocking YouTube, yet allowing YouTube Education could be worked.

[bossman]

As has been discussed in depth at various levels we will undoubtedly have a tiered internet access and those who have legitimate businesses will have to pay for a license to grant certain users the access rights via ISP's.

 

End users will undoubtedly pay for the service above and beyond as the ISP's and businesses pass on the costs.

 

As in many countries it is the ISP's who have now been given the "Gatekeeper" title and as ever they will make money out of it as well as the governments taxing these companies.

 

It is all about money and nothing else!

 

It's not about the safety of our children and their children just categorically "Money!"

 

The internet was devised to share information freely for everyone but as we see it has been used for purposes other than what it was meant for and how are we to police this?

 

ISP's along with the government couldn't organise a p*ss up in a brewery let alone control internet access.

 

Money makes the world go around and the more you have the faster you can go!

 

Total madness!!!

[mjs_mjs]

Proxies have more uses than just filtering, so for any internet connection with more than say 50 concurrent users they're beneficial purely for the cache. (obvs depends on your speed and supplier for that number)

[twin--turbo]

Proxies have more uses than just filtering, so for any internet connection with more than say 50 concurrent users they're beneficial purely for the cache. (obvs depends on your speed and supplier for that number)

 

That's a lot less true than it was, a large proportion of internet traffic is not easily cachable these days. I could probably turn off our cache and nobody would notice.

 

Rob

[zag]

Just playing devils adovocate here but some things that would be better if it was ISP level

 

- No more problems with SSL web pages, or authentication issues

- More reliable (not relying on a hardware box in your office)

- Less cost (We currently spend about 3k a year on filtering)

- Simple to administer via web interface

 

I'm still not getting the resistance from many ICT professionals on filtering. This filter is optional and in the future I would hope to have full control over what we block and what we don't.

 

What's not to like about that?

 

Of course there are also downsides such as

 

Tracking individual users

Different levels of access such as allowing youtube for staff and not students

Firewall capabilities

[zag]

yes as that will just filter out porn (and whatever else the power at bee deem unfit) wont say block youtube or sites you may want blocking for your own reasons

 

The "powers that be"?

 

As far as I know the filtering is controlled by the individual via a web interface.