Smoothwall Issues

[Techdw]

Just want to see if any one has smoothwall issues on a constant basis?

 

I have issue with it every week and am not getting sick of having it.

 

I called support and said I cannot do my job because of it and his reply was ''we will get back to you'', I said I cannot do my job at the moment and have deadlines, his response was ''he isn't sure when they get back to me'' so am looking to remove it now. All I can say is WOW

 

What other filering system do IT managers use in schools?

[dalehopper]

What issues are you having Techdw? Smoothwall support are usually pretty good at getting them sorted.

[Baerf]

Just want to see if any one has smoothwall issues on a constant basis?

 

I have issue with it every week and am not getting sick of having it.

 

I called support and said I cannot do my job because of it and his reply was ''we will get back to you'', I said I cannot do my job at the moment and have deadlines, his response was ''he isn't sure when they get back to me'' so am looking to remove it now. All I can say is WOW

 

What other filering system do IT managers use in schools?

 

Same as me then when i took over a school with Smoothwall installed. Had a member of my team spending a good day (across the week) on the Smoothwall due to numerous issues. The school didn't even set it up, it was an original install / config carried out by Smoothwall themselves (at least that was what i've been told). Although i always got the impression that their support team was very good.

 

Filtering systems seem to be like marmite, i personally use Lightspeed and am really happy with it (whereas others here will hate it, and conversely i can't stand Smoothwall whereas loads of people here love it).

 

I use Lightspeed, as it's;

 

- Simple to setup and maintain (so simple that our head of e-safety and pastoral care members of staff do the unblocking of websites).

- Support is excellent.

- It's been rock solid in both schools i've had it installed now (over 4 years).

- Reporting features are top notch (and quick to produce the results).

- We use the SPAM filter module as well, and it's proved to be very effective (again before we used the Smoothwall for SPAM filtering, and my users have stated they have seen a marked improvement on the reduction of SPAM emails since).

 

The negatives are that it doesn't do anything firewall related, so you need something else to do that for you (we use the Sophos UTM), it doesn't do Layer 7 application filtering (but our Sophos UTM does luckily), it isn't cheap. Also some of the websites it has blocked in the past really shouldn't of been blocked in the first place, but that's easily sorted out.

 

There's plenty of others out there, and i'm sure they all have their success stories.

 

B

[NeustroEduIT_Christine]

Sorry to hear you are having issues, we work with and offer a product called iboss. It is a patented layered stream based technology that does not use or rely on a proxy server to filter content. It has an optional firewall that can integrate with the system as well as Layer 7 application filtering. We have some case study references and more information, we can also run an informative/technical WebEx (whatever suits) if you'd be interested. There are also some great promotions/bundles about to be released so please feel free to PM me for some more information.

Happy to assist.

Christine

[caffrey]

I've never seen any costs for iBoss , what is a ballpark figure for it ?

[Achandler]

I got quoted:

 

As you require the Hardware Failover devices the initial cost for a three year contract would be around 14K.

 

That was based on 700 students I think, and was in late 2013/ early 2014.

[NeustroEduIT_Christine]

Hello,

I can PM you with some information and indicative figures. @Achandler the costs have since been improved - please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like an updated quote or WebEx.

Many Thanks,

Christine