Schools Broadband/Fortinet - Any Users?

[LeMarchand]

So, the LA is pulling it's usual trick of "You've got a month to decide before signing up for 3 years" (they've obviously learnt some tricks from a certain company that used to have a lot of say) and changing our internet/filtering as above. It might be a pointless question as the current filter comes from one of the major players and we seem to have a custom (limited) version of it, but what are users' views of the service?

 

Also, which remote access programs work with the setup? Zoho and Splashtop were amongst my favoured ones in terms of cost. The current setup chooses access by Windows login, so Chromebooks etc get strict filtering. I take it that Fortinet is more flexible? Can you set up alerts that will send notifications if certain terms are searched for?

 

Probably more questions, but those are the main ones atm.

[PaddyNewman]

SBB will probably answer more specifically about their offering but I do not (personally) rate Fortinet for anything but their hardware stuff, start doing filtering via it and its not a suitable set up for education, other people may disagree, but its definitely pointed towards a business set up than an educational one.

 

If its Netsweeper under the hood of SBB connection, I highly rate it, some hate it, some love it. Once you know how it works its perfectly fine, but as with anything....its got a learning curve and whilst it may not be as robust as something like Smoothwall, its not the cost of Smoothwall. I've had 10 years with it though, so have seen and used it a fair bit! I have also tried all the other major players and for someone who wants to get things sorted fast, nothing has worked better for me than Netsweeper. They also are simple to allow the remote products you want, just allow the URL. Splashtop can be done with 1 entry, or 2 if you don't want to decrypt it etc.

 

The setups I use don't "alert" as its a filtering system, not a monitoring one, but I definitely have set up scheduled reports on certain terms, categories, students at 1 minute intervals. No emails unless they hit the options.

 

There are a few other options to you though... quite a few in fact

[ifarmery1234]

SBB will probably answer more specifically about their offering but I do not (personally) rate Fortinet for anything but their hardware stuff, start doing filtering via it and its not a suitable set up for education, other people may disagree, but its definitely pointed towards a business set up than an educational one.

 

If its Netsweeper under the hood of SBB connection, I highly rate it, some hate it, some love it. Once you know how it works its perfectly fine, but as with anything....its got a learning curve and whilst it may not be as robust as something like Smoothwall, its not the cost of Smoothwall. I've had 10 years with it though, so have seen and used it a fair bit! I have also tried all the other major players and for someone who wants to get things sorted fast, nothing has worked better for me than Netsweeper. They also are simple to allow the remote products you want, just allow the URL. Splashtop can be done with 1 entry, or 2 if you don't want to decrypt it etc.

 

The setups I use don't "alert" as its a filtering system, not a monitoring one, but I definitely have set up scheduled reports on certain terms, categories, students at 1 minute intervals. No emails unless they hit the options.

 

There are a few other options to you though... quite a few in fact

 

I hated it, I'm not a Smoothwall fan but highly used to it now and trying to use the Netsweeper was painful. The client 'agent' for Netsweeper just didnt like to run, had to set GPOs to make sure the service started at boot up.

 

Didn't have to work with it for long as it was inherited but the internet connection went off and on a few times in a few short months, In many other schools over several years I've not had as many connection issues with Virgin Media.

[PaddyNewman]

Agreed, there is something odd with the agent and I know I am not the only one experiencing it! I have it running on a schedule now for our problematic clients but its not a proper workable solution. I think what is irksome with Smoothwall is its too vague and there are too many steps. I like efficiency, its just who I am, Smoothwall felt like I was having to decide 15 times what to do with YouTube or something, I want to allow it, I just press allow now, I don't need to say who or when or where, I know that already. I think it definitely serves a purpose in some places where you want absolutes, but I just can't deal with that

 

But no, you have reminded me I need to prod about the agent again.

[eddyc]

We’ve had Netsweeper for a while now via our LEA and run the service version of the Wagnet.

 

We’ve had ongoing issues where random devices forget who is logged in mid session.

 

We managed to replicate this issue by logging out a PC whilst SIMS or an unsaved word document was open (or any other application for that matter). Once the force log off screen comes up, I’d you cancel that and return to your desktop the wagent was no longer in the notification area but if you look the service is still running. It’s at this point it breaks and you get default web filtering and the only fix to date has been to either restart the PC (for an end user) or to get IT to restart the service remotely on their device for them which would reinstate the correct filtering level.

 

After several months of working with Netsweeper and our LEA/ISP they’ve released an update Wagent MSI and touch wood the issue seems to have gone away (for us at least). We’ve only had the new MSI for a day but everything we could historically do to break it no longer works and complaints from staff about YouTube etc being filtered have tailed off.

 

I hope this helps. May be worth asking Netsweeper or your ISP for a later version of the Wagent.

 

I’m not sure if ours is general release but can get the version number if it may help some of you.

 

eddyc

[eddyc]

It does appear to be on general release, actually!

 

FIXES:

 

1. BUG: There were WAgent 4.2.17.17 installation failures on M1 chipset MacOS Big Sur clients.

 

2. BUG: The Windows Workstation Agent Service Mode did not reliably restart the system tray icon once stopped for a user. This could happen if the system tray icon was terminated by the user, or the user canceled a sign out of Windows and did not fully complete the sign out process.

 

3. BUG: The new Workstation Agent Service did not reliably start the system tray icon once stopped for a user. This could happen is the system tray icon was hard killed or the user blocked a sign out of Windows and did not fully complete the sign out process.

 

https://helpdesk.netsweeper.com/docs/Flare/Netsweeper_Documentation/Content/Release_Notes/WAGENT_Release_Notes/WAgent_4_5_and_4_6_Release_and_Downloads.htm

[SchoolsBroadband]

So, the LA is pulling it's usual trick of "You've got a month to decide before signing up for 3 years" (they've obviously learnt some tricks from a certain company that used to have a lot of say) and changing our internet/filtering as above. It might be a pointless question as the current filter comes from one of the major players and we seem to have a custom (limited) version of it, but what are users' views of the service?

 

Also, which remote access programs work with the setup? Zoho and Splashtop were amongst my favoured ones in terms of cost. The current setup chooses access by Windows login, so Chromebooks etc get strict filtering. I take it that Fortinet is more flexible? Can you set up alerts that will send notifications if certain terms are searched for?

 

Probably more questions, but those are the main ones atm.

 

Fortinet when used with FortiAnalyzer or a new reporting engine we are about to release (sits on top of Fortinet or Netsweeper) is very good. @PaddyNewman is right that old versions of the Fortigate interface wasn't the most intuitive in the world for non technical people but the new v7 FortiOS really does add to it and when used in conjunction with our new education focused reporting engine is excellent.

 

Fortinet fully supports remote SSL VPN access and integration with 2-factor authentication for remote access.

 

If you've any questions to do send me a PM or I can get one of our techs to give you a call to discuss.

 

Thanks for considering us.

 

Dave

[PaddyNewman]

It does appear to be on general release, actually!

Few days old... I'll give that a test now, awesome!

[SchoolsBroadband]

Few days old... I'll give that a test now, awesome!

 

we've already started the ball rolling it out to some MATs and will then go general release for everyone

 

Dave

[ifarmery1234]

SBB will probably answer more specifically about their offering but I do not (personally) rate Fortinet for anything but their hardware stuff, start doing filtering via it and its not a suitable set up for education, other people may disagree, but its definitely pointed towards a business set up than an educational one.

 

If its Netsweeper under the hood of SBB connection, I highly rate it, some hate it, some love it. Once you know how it works its perfectly fine, but as with anything....its got a learning curve and whilst it may not be as robust as something like Smoothwall, its not the cost of Smoothwall. I've had 10 years with it though, so have seen and used it a fair bit! I have also tried all the other major players and for someone who wants to get things sorted fast, nothing has worked better for me than Netsweeper. They also are simple to allow the remote products you want, just allow the URL. Splashtop can be done with 1 entry, or 2 if you don't want to decrypt it etc.

 

The setups I use don't "alert" as its a filtering system, not a monitoring one, but I definitely have set up scheduled reports on certain terms, categories, students at 1 minute intervals. No emails unless they hit the options.

 

There are a few other options to you though... quite a few in fact

I totally agree, I find the main interface feels like an unfinished Back End.