Remote File Access

[Netwacky87]

Evening All!

 

Im a bit stumpted really on this one,

 

For a while now ive been wanting to replace our remote file access system (was written by an old student) and well it looks awful!

 

Im just curious as to how you guys did it, i had a meeting with my headmaster and he wants to be able for teachers to give out say homework...or revision sheets, themselves...so if it could intergrate into active directory, thats a bonus!

 

Just curious, o and we dont have sharepoint!

 

All opinions welcome!

 

Mart

[EduTech]

WebDAV Makes Remote File Access a Snap

 

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/7772/webrfm.html

 

WebDav - Does that help?

[FN-GM]

you dont really want port pointing directly to your servers. I recommend using something like sonicwall SSL VPN, Its a good secure way to do it.

[kmount]

Perfect use for a VLE if you want handing out/handing in of files etc etc. Moodle would be perfect.

 

Or if you want simple file access securely you could try Adito which is secure.

[m25man]

3sp's SSL-VPN is now a commercial product is where Adito came from.

The Adito offering looks pretty good especially as it's free.

 

This is what led me onto the appliance based SSL-VPN based products in the first place.

 

Whilst open source is going to be attractive for many due to the low cost I ended up coming back to appliance based hardware everytime.

 

It will be the number of concurrent users that will determine your path anyway, most people have more users than they have available bandwidth so investing £000's in hardware is a little pointless if you only have 256k uplink speeds!

 

The cheapest entry level product is the Netgear device at under £200 all the way up to the Aventail Corporate devices at £15k and above!

 

Personally I prefer the set it and forget it AD integrated Sonicwall devices, but at around a £1000 for a half reasonable unit it might be too rich for some people, but it does have a PDA vpn-client that means I can support most sites from anywhere using my phone which is pretty cool...

 

Many of the hardware firewall devices are now beginning to have SSL-VPN integrated or available as an option so you don't need multiple devices.

 

Remember that most of these offer multiple services and the SSL-VPN label often gets mis-interpreted.

 

Without actually connecting your kids to your LAN with VPN they get CIFS/SMB/DAV type access over https or Reverse Proxy services.

The VPN part we restrict to Admins only or SMT members that have more than a single brain cell...

[rh91uk]

We use HTTP Commander Web file manager - web based file manager - HTTP Commander ::: FEATURES here.

 

We are looking at moving to Fileway though (Remote File Access Solutions). Once @Soulfish get's an idea of pricing, we may look at trialing that.

 

Although from what I gather you may want to set up a VLE though. Do you have a VLE at the mo?