synaesthesia

Just over a grand for those! I suspect a 50 quid fiber cable and an active USB extension/long cable will do just fine I'm usually in favour for keeping things simple, no extra power requirements etc. Servicability may come into it, which is perhaps where hdmi over cat might have a very slight edge.

My money is on a teacher muting his room and applying it to all/general pebcak

It won't tick nearly any of the boxes that schools are obliged to follow in many countries, certainly not in the UK for a list of reasons too long to list here, but well documented in things like https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/filtering-and-monitoring-standards-for-schools-and-colleges

One look at their website and I'll file it under a "hell no". It might be the best thing in the world but Ling Ling's Car Emporium is less embarrasing. Assuming of course you're not in the UK, as that wouldn't tick any boxes in your safeguarding obligations.

Aruba InstantOn may be a good solution if you need to stay with a "brand" and have no chance of going over the limit (I think its 50 APs?) Also the number of current AP's might not be a good indicator of what you need - if you have 25 APs and they're covering multiple classrooms on old tech, you may find that newer wifi needs 1AP per 1 or 2 classrooms to give acceptable signal & performance levels. At that point then Cambium/UniFi is easily one of the better bets. Big difference in case this hasn't come up is better support (well, you get some compared to unifi's DIY route). I still have a preference for the UniFi kit purely as I can afford to buy and keep a few spares just in case we need to wait for warranty replacements (none yet) or something else (lightning strike killed APs, had 2)

Also note that each connection point adds a few metres in interference to your run - so a 5m cable with a wall socket (cable to back of wall socket, to front of wall socket) can be worth 10m of interference, plus a 2m flylead to the laptop is basically a 12m run. Hence so often why we have to make compromises. I don't let anyone install copper HDMI cabling as a result.

I see a lot of hdmi over CAT6 installations and whilst they often work, they are another point of failure, require power sources and just a pain in the backside. Fiber HDMI however is cheaper (15m cables for around 40 quid) and far more reliable. Just make sure that the end on the desk isn't plugged in and out all the time, so you may also need to look at desk hubs to keep them permanently connected. Makes the whole setup easier though, especially if you can do them over USB-C so just a single connection to your laptops. USB is generally easier and "active" USB cables are cheap & reliable.

The cost of a server & graphics card capable of supporting more than a few clients at once will be more than the cost of replacing an IT suite

Whilst I technically agree with you, morally I don't - their shoddy database isn't the school's problem. Impact is diabolical! (Although in our case it wasn't Impact, it was the cloud based which as far as I know is just remote impact - ESS style "Cloud"! )

Still considerably under the £1000 per school CRB Cunninghams wanted for a 10 minute job...

Considering the age of the machines, you won't be running windows 11 on them - is it not worth consolidating the issues there? (end of support this year for 10)

Even that bit is going against all the rules and regulations set out to protect our students and staff - I'd be having strong words with SLT to that effect.

Only the ones that shouldn't be teaching. Explain how much of a security hole it is, even locked down and it's just not a risk worth taking; he can use the tools he's given or stack shelves at Aldi.

Used to do that WAY back in the day, but just seems pointless now? If you have a web server, use it

Oooooh that's a good shout - as it's only search traffic that does fit the bill. Cheers!

This is just general student usage, no admin login present. I'll do a bit more testing & digging later and raise a case. (I'm currently swearing at Monitor whilst auditing devices )

Indeed, but at least we've usually got a reasonable solution to a symptom where we haven't got a hope in hell's chance of fixing the initial problem. The latter requires parents that parent, the banning of energy drinks & vapes, corporal punishment and social media. Let's stick to the cameras

Gives a new meaning to getting glassed down the pub

Idex across the board, directory diags all pass with flying colours. Forgot to mention, I noted about the chrome running as admin as we'd had that a few times that it was authenticating as the system user for a short while before picking up as the logged in user. That did get resolved though.

Just found something a little disconcerting - some users filtering requests are going through as unauthenticated IPs despite being successfully authenticated. The logs show some results coming through unauthenticated IPs, others with usernames attached. This appears to be via Chrome, but can't confirm if it happens with other browsers as yet. Have one instance where the same result at exactly the same time reports with and both without the username, as if a simultaneous search is made from the IP separate to the user. Not a major issue on it's own as long as the user is reported but there's more than one occasion where it's not, and it's only the unauthed IP showing in reports. Any clues where to start on this? Running on Smoothwall Maiden 25.

I'd be an advocate for them in behavioural hubs in schools and AP units.

Best service I've had in the past is Wave9, an easy recommendation.

Until the states sorts out their gun laws (i.e. it implodes on itself and they start again from roughly the bronze age) they'll never have enough cameras.

I can see it happening more widely. From policy and privacy perspectives, it raises some interesting questions that if anything make it *less* risky. For example, there's a good argument to say that having CCTV covering and live monitoring an area that is a) publicly accessible on your property or b) already visible, such as your reception area is less intrusive. Body cams would fall very much under this and knocks the points down a bit from the intrusiveness scale. However at the same time, generally speaking bodycams are a bit closer to video doorbells in function, complete with audio which you need to ensure is fully covered in an extensive DPIA and detailed clearly in policy. I don't think I'd have any trouble writing one up for this case, even though it does irk me somewhat that bodycams would have to be necessary in the first place. Also plenty you can do to make it less risky as far as personal data is concerned - the majority will work like your dashcam, on a rolling loop and very little actual retention unless the button is pressed to save whatever happened in the last few minutes. Perhaps you could set them up so they only record when specifically activated. Again, I don't like the idea that we might need such tech just like extensive CCTV, however these days we have to protect ourselves, our colleagues, our pupils and our property. People can moan about it as much as they like, but they're not the ones on the receiving end of some of what we put up with on a daily basis.

3 months sounds about right for any other support call with them tbh