Smoothwall help - new to it

[themightymrp]

We have taken over the IT support for a local primary school that has a Smoothwall filter. My knowledge of these is not great as I've only really used one briefly about 8 years ago.

 

We have an issue whereby if an iPad triggers a filtering alert, the IP address of the wireless access point is included in the report instead of the IP/name of the iPad? The filtering was previously configured by NYES support, so I'm not wholly familiar with their practices, but does that seem right? How should I configure it correctly?

 

My educated guess is it will be something to do with creating a 'location' which includes the IP's of the iPads's (if I set them as static) and applying student filtering to this. Does that seem right?

 

Help appreciated as always!

[timbo343]

We've taken over support from NYES on our Primary schools too but we have been using Smoothwall for best part of 12+ years and found that the "location" has the IP address of the APs so the filtering is reporting at AP level rather than device level. Take the IPs out for the AP, they should not be in there. Instead, create a location for the iPads, add all the static IPs in there and create a rule in Guardian for them.

 

Also, you could set a catch all rule in Web Proxy > authentication> transparent proxy so that anything on that network with the location of iPads would get Student unauthenticated filtering.

 

The next task with the iPads is how do you know who is using them? This is the main headache with them. We are looking to have ours on their own VLAN with the smoothwall captive portal that students log in to.

 

Actually, the APs might be listed in Web Proxy > Authentication, if this is the case, disable the rule.

 

Plenty of us on the NYNM group who can help with Smoothwall if you need a hand.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited September 20, 2024 by timbo343

[themightymrp]

Thanks @timbo343 - that's very helpful! I still need to give you a ring re Class Charts too, probably have to be Monday now if that suits?

[timbo343]

Thanks @timbo343 - that's very helpful! I still need to give you a ring re Class Charts too, probably have to be Monday now if that suits?

Sure give me a call.