Home Computers on the Network

[Stuart_C]

I've just had a bit of an odd question that I'm not happy with and need some advice.

 

One of our resident members of staff has a network point in her house (used to be used as her work office, anyway). She wants to "rent" the socket from the school and use it for her home computer for her personal use. Now I'm not too happy with the idea, both on principle we haven't done anthing like this for anyone else and for technical reasons (without joining the domain my internet filtering is going to tell her to get stuffed).

 

Are there any leagal issues I should be aware of? I.e. them having illigal software or downloading stuff?

 

What other good reasons are there why I should say "no" (so when she goes over my head to the Bursar I've got some arguments)

[powdarrmonkey]

• You (that is, the school) are responsible for whatever happens on the line by any user;
  
• There's a good chance that subletting the line contravenes your contract with your ISP, which could result in you being cut off;
  
• You need some legal framework for recovering damages by people plugging in stupid things, like forcing a wrong plug into the socket, sending high voltages down to switch equipment, etc;
  
• It will inevitably cost you in support time and so on, and if one teacher can have it so should the others ( > more support costs);
  
• She'll be connected to the main school network so even if she gets her own VLAN there is a data protection consideration.
  

[Stuart_C]

Were not so much "subletting" I don't think as she is actually connecting to our network. I suppose that it depends on where you define subletting.

 

I do like your other points though, especially 1 and 5.

 

I can also hide behind "you can't join home editions of XP and Vista to a domain*, and without joining the domain my internet filtering is (hopefully) going to stop you doing much".

 

* Whilst google tells me you can do it through some cheating, it's a bit of a mess and a real "get around" rahter than a solution. Besides I feel no need to mention it.

[ahuxham]

Our live in staff all had access to our network and thus the internet, they all went out on a secondary line through an unfiltered solution on the basis and complaints or allegations and their service would be removed.

 

Never had a problem with any of the staff.

[RabbieBurns]

we used to let our resident staff connect their personal laptops, but only after we installed the monitoring client onto their computer. The filtering picked up any bad sites etc, so restricted them to hotmail / facebook etc which is all they really used it for anyway.

 

(we used Netintelligence- SaaS, Anti Spam, Internet Security, Email as our monitoring and that runs as a client on the pc)

[elsiegee40]

I have flatly refused to do this on our network - mostly because I have absolutely no control over AV etc on home PCs.

 

In the few cases I have had the PCs concerned have been running XP Home and the technical level of the users was such that I was simply able to say 'it ain't compatible... XP Pro would be the minimum and even then...'

 

Most people at school don't understand that the network socket in the classrooms isn't like their phone socket or router at home. It doesn't just connect them to the internet. Getting that point understood will take you a long way.

 

On the electrical side, all electrical equipment used in school requires PAT testing annually. Our policy for use of electrical equipment, requires staff to have all items using mains electricity to be PAT tested before they are used in school and clearly states that the school takes no reponsibility for the maintenance or servicing of any equipment brought in. A couple of teachers have brought in their own printers to use locally - which (after PAT) have been installed by me, but the teachers have to provide all the cables and are responsible for buying and installing their own ink. I won't fix problems with these printers.