SchoolGuardian

[Simcfc73]

Afternoon

 

Nice that my air con packed in just as I have to start wearing a bl$$dy suit again innit.

 

I just thought I would sing the praises of SchoolGuardian as a web filtering solution and ask if anyone else uses it. The support always get back to me on the day and its got lots of lovely bells and whistles to play about with.

 

Things I like alot.

 

LDAP connection allows me to use windows groups different access, and it works.

Time based filtering to allow sites through at different times of the day. Really useful with our foreign students who allow to look at chinese sites after 6pm (boarders) but not during the school day.

Logging is really quick and allows you to add sites on the fly quickly.

 

I think the heat is getting to me as I actually like something using *.knickers

[webman]

But how much does it cost?

[Simcfc73]

Can you put a value of the children of tommorow?

 

 

Well I was using Smoothwall 2.0 for £0 and this install has cost me under £1500 for 220 licenses with a annual maintennance cost of 15% (I think). For my sanity its been money well spent.

 

Compared to Firebox and all that I think its superb. Its running on an 2Ghz Athlon chip with a gig of Ram.

[webman]

No comment

 

Hmmm. I've had a quick skim over the features and personally it doesn't seem worth that sort of money. But that's just me A custom-made box can potentially provide a higer level of functionality if set up correctly and a considerably cheaper price tag. We're currently using IPCop with some addons and transparent authentication and have very few problems. When the kids complain that they can't get on games, we know we've got atleast one thing right

[contink]

I have to admit I've looked at School Guardian when we were trying to get rid of Vital as our school ISP...

 

The price is a little on the high side but for schools that have no dedicated tech staff, and use contractors on a limited school budget and they want to be sure it all works without needing to learn it themselves (Teachers? learn?! ) then it's pretty reasonably priced IMHO.

 

For all that though I'm looking at Smoothwall and a bunch of mods for our content filtering.

[Simcfc73]

Geesh so much negativity.

 

When I used Smoothwall 2.0 I had loads of mods fitted but I ended up rebuilding it 3 times over twelve months, the logging didn't work and it would stop the web proxy service for no apparent reason. I know its GPL and all that and people work on it for the love of the product but I wanted to be able to pick up the phone and speak to a techie to fix the problem straight off. I haven't got the time to mess around with tarballs all day.

 

Oh and the price includes the blocklist downloads.

 

Anyone interested in screenies let me know.

[ChrisH]

Im looking forward to the new version of Censornet. The school guardian is a nice setup though by the look of it and I am sure its alot cheaper than alot of the stuff some schools are using. So like simcfc73 says it's a good option if you would like that support.

[ZeroHour]

Does noone use Sentian Bess Edition?

Its the dogs and does all that stuff out of the tin with pretty much any firewall/proxy you want to use. You just install its plugins. You can also have multiple deploy's all using the same web rules and centrally managed.

It does cost though but did not find it that bad and they are FAST at updating blocked sites.

[webman]

We've had IPCop (Smoothwall clone) running for well over a year now and not had any problems; and it would have that uptime as well if it wasn't for power loss.

[Geoff]

Why isn't it on a UPS?

[ZeroHour]

Because its a SCHOOL lol

Does it really matter?!?! (best not say that, teachers *may* hear my thoughts since they REALLY need to shop and buy holidays at all times)

[plexer]

I'm also waiting for the next censornet release which isn't going to be public until oct/nov time now.

 

I've got a rackmount here waiting to have it installed on.

 

Ben

[webman]

Why isn't it on a UPS?

 

Budget?

 

Not any more though, we've just free'd up a load of SmartUPS-700s by getting a huge rackmount UPS for all our servers. The smaller ones will soon be distributed around the switch cabinets & hopefully the proxy & gateway boxes

[john]

You think thats huge?! that struggles to power 4 proliants and my switch cabinets for longer than 3 minutes! Looking at a 10KV solution which should be enough to give me enough juice for everything now and in the future as well as a good amount of run time and shutdown time.

[webman]

Huge in comparison to a single SmartUPS 700 ;-)

[john]

Ah rete! Thankgoodnes for that, otherwise I would have to unleash my APC training on ya for huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge UPS's

[webman]

Hehe, you mean this big? 8)

[john]

Geez, they are old ones, APC don't make em like that any more (or at least in my info I have they dont!) But yeah that size, I imagine there is a good few KV in those babys. I was thinking more along the lines of this http://apcmedia.apcc.com/resource/images/500/Front_Left/50753518-5056-9170-D350F770EA011461_pr.jpg just so you know whats inside it as its shiny and new and we know we all lke a good drewl - APC AIS 3000 40kVA 400V w/4 Batt. Modules, Start-Up 5X8, Internal Maintenance Bypass, Cost Approx £8,750

 

(This is where Craig comes back and says they are just fancy APC cupboards with digital code locks )

[webman]

Hehe, yes, yes they are 8)

 

Or you could just get an industrial diesel generator and be done with it

[john]

Would you believe me if I said it was also on the list for when my 2000000000KVA of UPS's fail

[webman]

Wouldn't put it past you

[Geoff]

Would you believe me if I said it was also on the list for when my 2000000000KVA of UPS's fail

 

Hopefully not all at once, there'd just be a large crater where your school should be.

[Simcfc73]

Fallen out with SchoolGuardian.

 

Dogbert is running Smoothwall. I was under the impression that support was included in the first years purchase but it looks like I was mistaken. They charge £50 per call or you can buy 12 for £250 call outs. I've had a few issues already with it including the computer freezing (purchased a brand new one), LDAP not working correctly, IE not playing nice with it on sites that use certian ASPX pages and the log file filling up and killing the proxy service. When I rebooted the log files vanished which is really useful when your supposed to be protecting kids.

 

I am slightly peed off. Come back ISA, all is forgiven.

[tom_newton]

@Sim I'll get this checked out for you - support is included for 30 days with all purchases, not 1 year. Will get someone to examine your case closely - I know you are still entitled to support, as I have spoken with your account manager!

 

Hope this gets sorted to your satisfaction, please keep me up to date.

 

Cheers,

 

Tom