RM Broadband and SafetyNet Filtering - Any good?

[tj2419]

We are a secondary school and considering joining RM for our broadband using their SafetyNet filtering and hosted Cisco firewall.

 

Any other users already with RM. How would you rate the connectivity, filtering and firewall? I see they also have transparent proxy for BYOD and it is coming soon for users too (March i believe) anyone using this?

 

Is the service good?

 

I have a webinar booked for SafetyNet but interested on getting some real world opinions.

 

Thanks

Edited February 1, 2018 by tj2419

[synaesthesia]

I don't have personal opinion on it but when looking for alternative options for primary schools I was reliably informed that whilst the filtering is basic and the speeds generally good & reliable, RM are very strict with their policies and getting change requests though is a chore.

[Cache]

We use at one school I work at, the filtering is basic so you can't really compare it to something like Smoothwall, however it does do a job and you can report on users browsing with the UBF (but for the price you pay for it I don't feel you can't knock it for what it does). You can add/remove your own restrictions at will. The UBF does have a self certification on the Safer Internet Center site so you can see it does meet the current filtering requirements.

 

Speeds have been good, not had any downtime apart from 1 issue about 2 years ago which affected the RM network core and 1 where a farmer cutting a hedge managed to cut through one of Openreach's main cables (which I can't really blame RM for!).

 

Been pretty happy considering it was something I was very nervous about changing.

 

Any change requests for firewall rules I've put in have been dealt with quickly and easily, I log it one day and so far it's been put in place by the next.

[Steve21]

We've used it in multiple schools.

 

Speed wise, always been fine, yes every service has their blips but nothing ever as disastrous as half the stories you hear on here (Linked to multiple ISPs)

Filtering wise, yes it is basic but it's getting a lot better with the new user based filtering etc. It's self manageable too so no idea why people saying it's slow in that regards, 2-3 minutes and any changes are applied. Unless you're emailing support to do them for you

Firewall wise, as people said above you have to contact them "currently" (This is changing soon), but within a day or so you get the changes done no hassle. (Assuming it's nothing silly requested like unblock ze world!)

 

For the price etc not much more you could ask for I feel

 

Steve

[steve_forbes]

Hi there,

 

My name is Steve Forbes and I'm a Product Specialist at RM with responsibility for our Security, compliance and online safety products, it's great to see all your feedback and I will ensure it helps to shape our roadmap. If you have any other feedback, please keep it coming.

 

Many thanks

Steve

Edited February 3, 2018 by elsiegee40

[Spence_101]

From past experience the filtering is very basic (couldn't do any kind of usage reports etc) but would filter inappropriate websites. However the speed and reliability was fantastic, along with the customer service.

[Cache]

Hi there,

 

My name is Steve Forbes and I'm a Product Specialist at RM with responsibility for our Security, compliance and online safety products, it's great to see all your feedback and I will ensure it helps to shape our roadmap. If you have any other feedback, please keep it coming.

 

Many thanks

Steve

 

I've a couple of comments about the UBF filtering which I've fed back before (some I think are coming), mainly:

 

• Having to change the users password to enable Unify sync is a pain when first setting up
  
• the ability to filter by IP address/Location would be a great addition
  
• Being able to get the local IP from the logs rather than just our router IP would be great too
  
• Ability to apply UBF to the transparent proxy (although I think I read this was coming and @tj2419 obviously has heard something similar)
  
• Ability to perform content modification rules, such as inserting headers to control things like Youtube access/Google Domain restrictions
  
• Ability to set the default reporting period so that if you switch from one page to another, you don't have to keep remembering to set the dates/times again!
  

Edited February 3, 2018 by elsiegee40

[deano3693]

I agree with all of the above. RM Broadband is fantastic. We moved in November and no issues so far migration was very smooth and all engineers i have dealt with have been very helpful and kept you informed off progress. Firewall requests have been quick - I've logged 3 this week all dealt with in less than 24 hours.

 

Filtering as people have said is limited but does serve a purpose. We use Lightspeed on top so haven't had too much to do with the Safetynet filtering.

 

Dean.

[AlanD]

I think I'm correct in saying that you need RM unify (to provide user identity) in addition to the broadband service itself. And RM unify isn't cheap with annual charges and setup charges. And if you use wireless - say for staff - I'd be interested to know how well it works with personalised Apps - like social media ones...and whether it works at all with Android 8 (as that won't allow intermediate certificates to inspect https traffic).

[steve_forbes]

You are correct @AlanD that UBF requires RM Unify for identity but we provide a basic version of the platform for this purpose and it is at no extra cost.

[deano3693]

I think I'm correct in saying that you need RM unify (to provide user identity) in addition to the broadband service itself. And RM unify isn't cheap with annual charges and setup charges. And if you use wireless - say for staff - I'd be interested to know how well it works with personalised Apps - like social media ones...and whether it works at all with Android 8 (as that won't allow intermediate certificates to inspect https traffic).

 

Transparent filtering also works across all devices - Twitter works, Whatsapp etc all work as required. Not sure on the Android 8 comments but i suspect it works fine as there isn't a certificate on the transparent filtering currently and surely this issue is going to be present for all filtering systems as MANY use a intermediate certificate.

 

Dean.

[AlanD]

Transparent filtering also works across all devices - Twitter works, Whatsapp etc all work as required. Not sure on the Android 8 comments but i suspect it works fine as there isn't a certificate on the transparent filtering currently and surely this issue is going to be present for all filtering systems as MANY use a intermediate certificate.

 

Dean.

 

Oh...I'm interested and curious about this. "Transparent" filtering - as I understood it - simply means there is no need to direct your web traffic to a proxy...although there may be (and probably is a transparent proxy in line).

 

But I don't understand how such a filter could possibly see "google searches"...or youtube...or any kind of https traffic for that matter without a certificate installed on devices (which might be pushed out automatically to desktops...but has to be a manual process for devices).

 

The only other means of filtering would be DNS filtering....which still wouldn't let you see the traffic - but you might redirect it to a blocked page.

 

Can anyone else confirm that filtering is possible in this "transparent" way without a certificate ... and if so ...how does it work?

[Cache]

The transparent proxy applies your default level of safetynet filtering applied to all users to the devices using it, hence my request for the enhancement above. So no, it doesn't do the filtering on google searches as it doesn't redirect to the sslfilter - it does however enforce safesearch through DNS.

[abaxter2]

I am happy with RM broadband and safety net, but the transparent filtering is not perfect without manually installing the ssl certificate, without the certificate users get "Your connection is not secure" my wireless network points to RM dns servers so filtering does work, just not as clean for the user as I would like it to be

[steve_forbes]

I've a couple of comments about the UBF filtering which I've fed back before (some I think are coming), mainly:

 

• Having to change the users password to enable Unify sync is a pain when first setting up
  
• the ability to filter by IP address/Location would be a great addition
  
• Being able to get the local IP from the logs rather than just our router IP would be great too
  
• Ability to apply UBF to the transparent proxy (although I think I read this was coming and @tj2419 obviously has heard something similar)
  
• Ability to perform content modification rules, such as inserting headers to control things like Youtube access/Google Domain restrictions
  
• Ability to set the default reporting period so that if you switch from one page to another, you don't have to keep remembering to set the dates/times again!
  

 

Thanks for the feedback, there are a couple of areas that I can feedback on immediately:

 

SSL interception (including Google search term filtering) is available for transparent filtering, this is an opt-in service that can be enabled by calling our service desk. This then needs the certificate to be deployed to all devices browsing transparently. There are a few exceptions around where this can be setup if you receive your SafetyNet filtering through a regional grid partner, in which case it would be worth checking with your grid support contact.

 

We’re also in the process of releasing some improvements to RM SafetyNet which will allow transparent SSL filtering to be configured from within the administration interface based on IP range (for example, allowing transparent SSL filtering only on a specific IP range). This will be rolled out alongside the new support for IP based filtering policies and transparent user based filtering.

[yac2016]

RM Broadband has been rock solid and does what is says on the tin, change requests are done quickly and the performance is very good on the lines. In Staffordshire we are having horrendous problems using Updata and Netsweeper via Link2ICT.