Onsite Smoothwall vs Hosted Lightspeed

[The_IT_Guy]

We are just starting off looking at replacing our old LEA filtering. Going to be getting some prices for filter and firewall but can't decide between hosted lightspeed from the likes of schoolsbroadband or smoothwall.

 

Just wondered how people who are currently using the products felt?

 

Has anyone used both?

 

Lightspeed seems to offer a number of really good features e.g. filtering student devices outside of school, cloud hosted so don't have to worry about hardware etc

 

Smoothwall filtering seems a bit more proactive and more popular on here. But was reading about the support tokens what seemed to be causing some upset on here.

 

Any advice before i speak to the companies would be really useful thanks.

[Sylv3r]

We've got a smooth wall box too and we love it. Like anything it has it's issues, especially when rolling out updates etc, but the support is generally pretty good and issues are often resolved pretty quickly.

 

We don't use it, but theres an option for your Smoothwall to filter student devices off site too - Smoothwall Connect I think it's called.

[Patrick]

County host lightspeed as the default filter for us. Don't have any problems with it and is straight forward to use. But I haven't used smoothwall so I can't compare.

[tj2419]

County host lightspeed as the default filter for us. Don't have any problems with it and is straight forward to use. But I haven't used smoothwall so I can't compare.

 

Do you run BYOD with it? Was it easy to set up with Lightspeed as that is a major aim for us to get setup once we switch.

[Patrick]

We didn't actually set it up, as its run by LA. It's completely transparent so any connected devices are filtered, with no proxy settings configured.

 

I think the off site management is done by locking the device's settings so that it is using the PAC file. And you probably need lightspeed MDM to do this for iPads.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Patrick

[dhicks]

Has anyone used both?

 

Yes, I've used Smoothwall at my previous school and we currently have an on-site Lightspeed server here. We've been looking at SchoolsBroadband's Internet-with-hosted-filtering too, it looks like a nice all-in-one option that takes away the need to deal with local hardware but still gives fine-grained control over your filtering. I've found Lightspeed's support to be quick and responsive and know what they're talking about, too. Smoothwall probably wins on number/maturity of features, though. Lightspeed is proving a bit expensive, too, so we're considering whether we could move to something cheaper.

[Jawloms]

We're a couple of years on from this thread now. Has anyone any more experiences they could share? We are with the LA for Internet, partly because it means I don't have to worry about it so much; by which I don't mean "it's not my responsibility" as I know it is, I mean it's all done with E2BN so if someone else reports a dodgy site, all schools get it filtered without me having to do anything. They have now decided that we're all going to have an onsite Smoothwall. I have nothing against Smoothwall, but if I'm going to be forced to go down the route of an on-site box, I might as well look around at all my options, leave the LA and save myself a few £s.

 

Thank you

 

Stuart

[zag]

I'd go hosted if I had the chance. One more piece of hardware to worry about.

[Wave9_Lee]

Personally I would go with an on premise UTM. You are in total control of your environment, able to adapt to any changes in your infrastructure or external factors. With the right support, you don't need to be an expert on the config, but can have the best of both worlds. On-premise UTM (IMO) will always offer a more extensive, flexible and customisable experience. In addition, should you wish, you're not tied to the same provider for both your internet connection and web filtering/security platform.

 

regards

 

Lee

[sparkeh]

Personally I would go with an on premise UTM.

I would have to agree. Given some of the feedback on here about outages of certain hosted solutions I am glad we have an onsite UTM that we are in control of. Onsite with good support backing you up is, in my opinion the best way to go.

[AlanD]

We use a smoothwall appliance. It does Load balancing between 2x ISP for us. Its runs DHCP for our wireless BYOD - and RADIUS too (integrating these two allows for one sign on - with no subsequent logon challenges to establish who the user is). And of course it allows us to write firewall rules between our VLANS based on username. Its pretty good at "prevent" reporting - probably its strongest point. My repeated annoyance is that when you tick the box say allow access to "google docs" - it works fine for desktop PCs...but not BYOD - when you end up having to create and write separate rules....in fact you end up writing rules for most BYOD access because the desktop ones don't often work for mobile devices. Don't understand why smoothwall doesn't produce a separate set for mobile devices. And of course it does VPN connections (for our MIS system to talk to on line web server)...and it does reverse proxy for running our internal web sites...

 

So I quite like smoothwall....but I looked at a number of others....and I always recommend others should do the same. Never make a choice because you hear a handful of people say a good thing about a product. By all means use that information to include it in your decision as to which products to test - BUT - you need to mae your own decision based on your own priorities.

 

Smoothwall is horribly expensive - for expensive - and there are free products like PF sense that many use and it does a fine job for most things.

 

Most offer free on site trials. Don't omit this stage of testing with you top selection - especially based on a reluctance to spend the time on it....i

[sparkeh]

Oh yes the expense of Smoothwall was a large factor in us dropping it. Compared to similar products it is jaw dropping.

[gshaw]

Oh yes the expense of Smoothwall was a large factor in us dropping it. Compared to similar products it is jaw dropping.

 

Need to shop around a bit more in that case, our Smoothwall price was in and around \ less than the usual competitors on here at the time

[zag]

Smoothwall has nearly trebled in price since we first got it!

[sparkeh]

Need to shop around a bit more in that case, our Smoothwall price was in and around \ less than the usual competitors on here at the time

We were direct with Smoothwall. Are you saying that going with a reseller is cheaper? Why are they not offering the best price themselves?

Smoothwall has nearly trebled in price since we first got it!

Aye.

[gshaw]

We went direct too, maybe as a Bloxx customer wanting to move that helped the price but all the others I looked at with equivalent functionality were costing more.

[Opendium_Steve]

I've got to agree with @Wave9_Lee - an on-site UTM is much more flexible than a hosted system, especially if you want to use it to control traffic between VLANs (e.g. isolate BYOD networks from your LAN, etc.) And having to change filters when you move ISPs is an almighty pain that you avoid with an on-site system.

[ridleyrumpus]

Maybe it is the way it is configured but as an end user I find Smoothwall to be very disruptive. Too many times the site/app/browser just "stalls" with no indication of it wanting you to click authentication. Getting videos embedded in a website to work for students is a no no even after several years of faffing about.

[TechMonkey]

Maybe it is the way it is configured but as an end user I find Smoothwall to be very disruptive. Too many times the site/app/browser just "stalls" with no indication of it wanting you to click authentication. Getting videos embedded in a website to work for students is a no no even after several years of faffing about.

 

Definitely sounds like the way it is configured. On our desktops and tablets controlled by the school there is no sign in or authentication as it is based on the logged in user. On staff personal devices the only sign in is when they join the SSID.

[ridleyrumpus]

One problem I find is the Inventry signin/signout app doesn't work as it fails when you enter the site as it cannot get authentication.

 

For pupils I frequently have to go round opening another browser/tab to force an authentication before they can actually get their real browser app to work.

[AlanD]

Maybe it is the way it is configured but as an end user I find Smoothwall to be very disruptive. Too many times the site/app/browser just "stalls" with no indication of it wanting you to click authentication. Getting videos embedded in a website to work for students is a no no even after several years of faffing about.

 

Sounds as if you are using Captive portal? With school owned/shared devices? There is always going to be some kind of compromise here. Either you set a "long" lease - but then the second user to use the device is still identified as the first user....or a shorter lease - in which case, for a second user browsing (or an app) can unexpectedly grind to a hlt because smoothwall wants them to re-authenticate - but apps (or a process in the browser) are not aware of this.

 

We use Enterprise/Radius for BYOD mobile devices....and AD integration for desktop machines - and it seems reasonably OK....but still, not perfect I agree. I have had complaints about embedded videos too...and I've seen browsing come to a halt for no good reason - and starting a new session works just fine.

[sippo]

We use Smoothwall onsite at our secondary, and hosted lightspeed for our primaries. In my opinion, Lightspeed is a little too basic for the secondary but absolutely superb for the smaller sites.