tom_newton

Yeah, we are getting mixed reports with Cloud, working a-ok for some, not for others - definitely worth a try, but the fix may only be temporary.

Thank you Rob! There are some big trusts now with no appliances (or heading that way, sometimes there are a few schools left to migrate - one of the benefits of being able to run hybrid). In terms of support, I think the Smoothwall team take a lot of beating, even tho we have not been without our problems. Every company goes through ups and downs, Securly are no different. I know a number of their support staff (a few are ex-colleagues) and I won't say a bad word about em, they're good people. At Smoothwall, however, we have the largest UK support team of any safeguarding vendor by some considerable distance. Of course we also support more customers. However this does give us a little more flex in staffing, so at the moment, I have to say I am proud of our support service. We're also happy to help MSPs train up their staff in order to make the customer experience even better. If @Nexarius wants to get in touch I would be happy top connect them to our dedicated partner team.

It's my understanding that you hit a bit of an issue where we had recently updated the rules to mitigate an overblock, and this coincident with the slightly different context we get on ipad (we work with slightly less data on that platform) is at the root cause of the issue. Right now I'm traveling between our UK and AU offices, so I've not got a full picture, but this is being taken very seriously and is in view of the most senior people at Qoria. I'll keep a close eye on the root cause analysis.

TBH it was probably the way they force install the extension - we wfell into that trap about 5 years ago, but changed the deployment method

Yes -sophos will see requests before (on prem) smoothwall, and responses after. The converse is true for the smoothwall browser plugin.

SIP is a bit of a crummy protocol. The setup is done on 5060 but then the rtp streams are all random high port. A sip helper or proxy can work out which ports to open in real-time. My suggestion is to vlan off the phones and open the ports outbound just for them, outbound doesn't offer too much impact to security as long as its not arbitrary for eg desktops that could be compromised and use open ports for exfil

I'd come in here and recommend the sharply dressed Dave Foulks and his pals at ICT direct, as I am sure they are too shy to do it themselves

Thanks Joel! Yes, I am still recovering from BETT (including getting us all back to Leeds with all the trains cancelled). There was a marked uptick in people asking about classroom. We have had the classwize product running successfully in the US for many years. It is available in UK, but we haven't pushed it yet, as sometimes talking about too much stuff is a bit confusing If you need further info drop me a PM with your details!

Ad blocking in youtube is becoming impossible we think - obviously google dont want us to do this

Similar to @Rob_D's suggestion I have seen mouse-odd change wether a device is plugged in or not (in my case it was a dodgy PSU causing pointer jump)

I would invite the DOGErs to consider chesterton's fence, before slashing "red tape" and "unnecessary government spend"

Yes - usual stuff, close tabs, force open website, monitor screens etc.

Smoothwall now offer a classroom tool - it's not something we go big on in the UK (simply because not many people want it), but its in use in huge districts in the US. Particularly if you're an existing filter or monitor customer this can be very good value.

Support ticket time then I think

Not something I have seen before. Could be a firewall rule locally on the Smoothwall blocking that IP from being accessed?

Thanks Chris! I will be there Weds through Fri - so please come and say hi on the Smoothwall stand, wether you are an old pal, existing user, ex user, or entirely new to us, always great to meet edugeekers!

Can you send me the ticket where you waited 5 days please? I would want to see where we are going wrong, most tickets are getting a good turnaround

Can you email me your details? Support should be responsive, as while we are down a couple with illness right now it's not a huge backlog (it's something we watch really carefully).

Thanks for the update, and thank you for your patience while we fixed this snafu!

It won't install on an unmanaged device. The hwb guys have a flag set that prevents it

Yes - chances are your extensions are in mode1, so we cant do a blocklist fix. The extension fix should be done today - it's in QA now, but we are always at the mercy of how fast or slow it goes through Google/Microsoft's store review. *Usually* this is quick, but when we are in a hurry...!

Perhaps it is misconfigured - if you have the "forceos=chrome" mode on, it will try and run on windows even if the agent is not there (which will lead to it being disconnected). Would suggest raising a ticket

Thanks, useful intel. You might have given us a new idea there!

Not a lot unfortunately - the guys who control both the browser and the website were always going to win on the battle of what we are forced to look at. We will continue to push google for an answer

if you do Smoothwall:// Diag in a browser it should show the diag page with the blocklist version https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016413920-Run-Diagnostics-to-troubleshoot-issues-with-Cloud-Filter