LightSpeed vs SmoothWall

[jlindler]

All,

 

First post here, but I have visited the site quite a bit over the years look at solutions.

 

We are a current LightSpeed customer, but my superintendent has heard good things about Smoothwall. We are on a time crunch with some specific funds to be used and are trying to make a fairly quick decision. I have looked at a demo of Smoothwall and talked with a neighboring district about their implementation; however, they do not use Chromebooks. We have a ton of CB's for both classroom and take home use, and right now, the authentication through Google is almost seamless (they only have to click the G+ Sign In button). Does anyone have experience with CB's Smoothwall - particularly with authentication? Some earlier threads indicate some issues where out there.

 

Also, any general advice about one product vs the other based upon more current features would be helpful. (I have looked a many of the prior threads, but some are older.)

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Jay

[SwedishChef]

Hi Jay, I'm a big smoothwall fan, I haven't used lightspeed's filter solution although I'm not sure it will scan the content of pages and is more URL based ??

 

I have recently been provisioning Chromebooks through the smoothwall and as one step further I will be looking to use the chromebook/smoothwall authentication services, this will match up google accounts to internal AD accounts and allow me to filter appropriately.

 

On everything else it rocks, AD integration multiple proxy listening ports and different methods of AUTH (ie kerboros NTLM, SSL) were a winner for me, and the fact I can use it as a VM or as a UTM was even better. (and perform basic bandwidth management out of the box ie: reduce the stream level for youtube videos to certain AD groups!)

 

Don't get me wrong it's not always been plain sailing but they react quick for me, and always look to see how to improve things, I know for a fact they have set-up a "ChromeBook" A-Team to handle the fact more and more people are using it.

 

I'd be happy to give you a reference over the phone if needed.

[philipksmith]

Thanks for the question.

 

We have just released the Chromebook Extension (and supporting services on the proxy) and, as SwedishChef mentioned, we have established a SWAT team to understand exactly how customers are planning to use their Chromebooks and provide assistance in configuration and operation.

 

Our Chromebook Extension is completely single sign-on. User doesn't even need to hit the G+ sign-in button (in fact you might want to check this situation as well since we've seen Google moving away from G+ as a login mechanism even in the last week - G+ based solutions might no longer work).

 

We integrate with AD via GADS, using the same credentials for Chromebook and non-Chromebook. We also support local and remote operation for users taking CBs home.

 

I'd be happy to discuss in more detail with you - feel free to contact me.

 

Cheers

 

Phil

[swsedu]

Hi all, sorry to piggyback this post but I think my questions might fit in here. Our current filtering provider just informed me that they went out of business.

 

I too am looking at Smoothwall or Lightspeed for our (small) school. We are a mixed environment with about 60 Windows 7 devices, and handful of tablets and phones as well as a little over 100 Chromebooks. I have already reached out to both companies and am in the process of researching both options for our school.

 

First question is regarding a firewall, I know Lightspeed would require me to also purchase a firewall but Smoothwall has a firewall integrated that we can use. Is this true? What are the downsides of using the integrated firewall as opposed to a dedicated firewall?

 

I am also interested to find out if there is any alternative way of setting up filtering for Chromebooks, without using GADS and single sign on (we do not integrate our Google accounts with our AD accounts). With my current filter provider I had setup filtering groups and reporting based on IP ranges. Is this possible with either of these solutions? What (if any) are the downsides? Our Chromebooks do not go home with students.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Mark

[snagrat]

Lightspeed will allow you to authenticate with GAFE without GADS or SSO.

 

Then you can create rules on Lightspeed to query users/group that are in GAFE

[Opendium_Steve]

Our current filtering provider just informed me that they went out of business.

 

Out of interest, do you mind saying who that was? - I've not heard of anyone going out of business on the grapevine yet.