BYOD Filtering

[Shadow_Walker]

We are looking for a solution where pupils can bring in their devices and connect to our wifi and enter there school login details as authentication. We need a solution in which if the filtering fails our rm filtering will kick in instead.

 

At my previous school we used lightspeed rocket filtering which worked well but if the rocket went down then we would lose internet which is not an option over here.

 

Thanks

[Shadow_Walker]

*bump*

[Edu-IT]

We need a solution in which if the filtering fails our rm filtering will kick in instead.

When you say fails, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean the appliance fails in terms of hardware?

 

Smoothwall, Bloxx, Lightspeed would all be suitable. If any of the onsite appliances fail and you don't have a redundant appliance, you could just switchover to the RM filtering by pointing clients at that proxy instead of the onsite one. Or just run two appliances in failover? Chances of them both going down at the same time would be pretty slim I'd say if you invest in good hardware. You can run Smoothwall virtualised too so you could have multiple virtual servers.

[Shadow_Walker]

With lightspeed though if it goes down then another filtering system doesn't kick in. Unless I am wrong.

[Edu-IT]

With lightspeed though if it goes down then another filtering system doesn't kick in. Unless I am wrong.

Same with them all. If it's an onsite appliance for example, and it's got a failed power supply, how do you expect it to know to switchover to something else? If you run them in pairs, then it should be intelligent enough to do it but if it's a single filter nothing is going to automatically move over to RM.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Edu-IT

[edutech4schools]

Its not that it doesn't kick in it's that the clients need to be configured to switch to another filtering system.

[Edu-IT]

Exactly. If you've pushed a proxy out through group policy, they'll still be pointed at the 'failed' filter if it goes down. So there will be some work needed to rectify that if that ever occurs. Edited June 24, 2014 by Edu-IT

[Shadow_Walker]

Same with them all. If it's an onsite appliance for example, and it's got a failed power supply, how do you expect it to know to switchover to something else? If you run them in pairs, then it should be intelligent enough to do it but if it's a single filter nothing is going to automatically move over to RM.

 

So in theory lightspeed could work so why do the headteachers have to sign the disclaimer?

[Edu-IT]

So in theory lightspeed could work so why do the headteachers have to sign the disclaimer?

That is down to the school taking responsibility for providing the filtering, and will vary between ISP. Not all ISP's will require you to make that declaration.