SBB Netsweeper- Youtube blocked but accessible

[stevenramsden]

Is is it just me?

SBB's netweeper struggling to block Youtube correctly

 

Had reports of pupils accessing Youtube which is normally blocked

When testing on a pupil account I first get the blocked page, but a second attempt to access the site gets me straight in

Netwseeper logs even show that it is logging and denying the page, despite it being fully accessible at the same time

Thought it was a one off having seen at one site last Nov still waiting on a solution for that school, but now seeing the same at a different school today

 

Anyone else seen and been provided a solution/fix?

 

Thanks

[paulkerton]

Well whatever you want, knowing how things have gone recently - they'll fix it for you and then immediately break it for everyone else.

Roll on renewal time.

[PaddyNewman]

Netwseeper logs even show that it is logging and denying the page, despite it being fully accessible at the same time

 

Are you fully decrypting or are you selectively doing so.

 

Also, presumably (I don't know the behind the scenes configs) they have blocked UDP 443 to anywhere (and TCP 443 to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4) to prevent QUIC and HTTP/2 stuff, as well as Chromes inane ability to tunnel Google stuff to its own DNS servers over HTTPS for fun...

 

On Chrome, if you type chrome://flags and search for QUIC, set to disable and close/re-open the browser, does it stop it then?

 

You'll see the deny request because its going to send that initial message via TCP, I see it every single day and as such I perma-bin UDP 443 as QUIC is a PITA.

[liamrobinson]

Are you still experiencing this issue? we've noticed this today as well, with Schools Broadband and Netsweeper!

[stevenramsden]

I saw the issue across two schools, Disabling QUIC in Chrome didn't fix the issue for them.

SBB do offer this as guidance so I suspect it helped others affected and worth a shot.

 

The school's affected had the issue between Nov 2021 and April 2022 before moving on to a new provider.

A working solution was never found during this time and the primary and junior school age pupils had full access to Youtube during this six month period, which was a massive problem for all involved.

[round2it]

we had a similar issue on exa networks, student logs in and can access youtube, next student logs in cant access youtube.

 

as a work around i added a gpo to deny youtube for edge and chrome this worked

[SchoolsBroadband]

Are you still experiencing this issue? we've noticed this today as well, with Schools Broadband and Netsweeper!

 

Hi @liamrobinson others have made some good suggestions on here. We can also block QUIC at the firewall level but we generally do this by default for all new installs anyway. That doesn't mean that QUIC is the issue though.

 

We have sometimes seen new URLs randomly added from YouTube which Netsweeper has to play catch up on but that's rare.

 

Please do give the team a call on 0 11 33 222 333 and they'll look into it for you.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[liamrobinson]

Dave I don't thinks it's limited to SBB just a netsweeper issue in general, I've spoken to another school who is using NS hosted by LA and they have the same issue. I've resolved by blocking via GPO but still needs looking at, I'll raise a ticket in the morning.

[PaddyNewman]

It's not Netsweeper, otherwise we would be in big trouble!

 

Do you have the ability to amend your firewall as I suggested a few posts above? I'd be keen to see what's actually going on as I know 100% it's not going to be Netsweeper if the reports show denied, or worse, doesn't show the request.

[liamrobinson]

I don't have access to block the ports, SBB will be able to do that for me though, I could ask them to try it, disabling QUIC on edge and chrome doesn't seem to make any difference either

[PaddyNewman]

Try blocking what I threw above and if SBB can confirm it's blocking it but you can still get there, I'd be very interested to see!