ReBoot

You could take a look at the ARP cache on the router to see if its been able to resolve the problem IPs to MAC addresses on your LAN. I guess as these are virtual IPs all the PBX addresses are using the same physical port. If this is the case it suggests something internal to the PBX as all the IPs are using the same physical interface and MAC (which must be working if you can ping one address). Also assume there are no VLANs involved.

Unfortunately probably not. There is some info here on using wireshark. You need to make sure the layer 2 traffic you are interested in is replicated on the interface where you have wireshark. Putting a switchport in promiscuous mode achieves this. Traffic to the Smoothwall will probably not be on another Watchguard port because of MAC learning. https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/Ethernet

When I first setup my school's broadband I had a similar issue with DNS packets being dropped. This turned out to be a firmware bug in the Draytek router I was using and an update to later firmware sorted things out. I did take me a few weeks to track down the issue and resolve it. I was able to get dns service stats on the local proxy server we use which showed what was happening. I would suggest 4 approaches to diagnosing the problem: Maybe possible to get DNS service stats on the smoothwall as I did to confirm what's happening. If both your suppliers are denying responsibility you may have to employ something like wireshark to look at packets between the Smoothwall and Watchguard. Its possible packets are being dropped by another component such as your router as I experienced. Is it possible to take the watchguard out and test without it or substitute another firewall. Good Luck !

My mistake for not reading original post ! Yes the thumbnails do show the video. I think you can block the thumbnails by excluding mm.bing.net in addition to explicit.bing.net - however this does make Bing look a bit messy.

Just checked this on my homegrown Dansguardian/Squid setup and if the video is blocked on Youtube its also blocked when I try and access it using a Bing video search. I have Google/Youtube locked in restricted mode using DNS and also block explicit.bing.net.

Once you have restricted mode on using DNS you will need a Google Apps account to override it. YouTube's classification of videos will block lots of innocent content that your teachers will want to access. Luckily its not too time consuming to sign up for Google Apps.

I have the restricted mode locked across my network and use Google Apps to provide a teacher account which can be used to show unrestricted content. I have a local proxy server/filter using Dansguardian and Squid. My gut feeling is that you can't force local DNS resolution when using an upstream cache. What is SWGFL's approach to YouTube filtering ? I think our LEA uses SSL intercept on the search terms and page content rather than relying on YouTube's restricted mode (same applies to Google searches). This is a fundamentally different approach to using restricted mode. I think you need to talk to SWGFL to find out how they handle YouTube and if and how it integrates with restricted mode.

Footnote on the routing question. You will always require routing with VLANs unless there will be no traffic between them and no internet access. For Internet access your router will need a route for each VLAN subnet associated with a physical port or tagged subinterface. Inter VLAN routing is a form of policy based routing or access control where the router is configured to block or pass traffic between specific VLANs.

"Now each DHCP server is setup to distribute from the same range but do not cross (i.e DHCP 1 = 10.0.0.1 - 10.0.0.100 and DHCP2 = 10.0.0.101 - 10.0.0.200)." Each VLAN needs to be on a different subnet. As I understand your description you are allocating part of the same subnet from each DHCP server. This isn't how VLAN design works. You can't route to each VLAN if they are on the same subnet. Without going into detail there is also no benefit from using VLANs in this way as you haven't segmented your broadcast domain. I suggest you start by splitting your address range into 2 subnets such as 10.0.0.0/25 and 10.0.0.128/25 (255.255.255.128) as a starting point. 10.0.0.1 Gateway 10.0.0.2 - 126 DHCP Range 10.0.0.129 Gateway 10.0.0.130 - 254 DHCP Range You will need routes on your router for each VLAN subnet 10.0.0.0/25 and 10.0.0.128/25.

In your original post you say half the school is experiencing issues with both your internal network and the internet. This suggests an access switch or uplink is affected - are all the affected users on a specific access switch ? If they are this should narrow down the problem space. Have there been any changes to your network recently ? One potential cause of intermittent packet loss is a duplex mismatch - one end is duplex the other half. This can occur when auto-negotiation is used and fails to setup the link correctly. (Usually best to setup duplex in the switch/router config where possible.)

If you school uses Office 365 (free for education) one of the Sharepoint template sites is a Wiki. I've started using this to document my network and also store copies of key documents. For documenting GPOs I think you can some of the reports on policy in html format - might be worth looking into if this could be used.

I can't see why this would be necessary unless they have some sort of template addressing scheme they use for all their sites. Looking at the subnet they require you to use suggests NAT is being done at your site so you should be able to use anything you want with the proper network configuration. Comparing the work involved in you re-addressing your whole school vs your supplier tailoring their solution is a no brainer - they should tailor their addressing to support you. Requiring you to undertake this amount of work without prior warning (before you signed up) wouldn't give me a good feeling about the suppliers competence.

If you're talking £90 for a motherboard upgrade I'd say its not worth the effort. I've been buying Dell OptiPlex 780 USFFs on eBay for less than this complete with monitor, stand, keyboard and mouse. 3GHz C2Duo 4GB RAM and 320GB HDDs. Nice little machines and ideal for schools.

I use a Draytek 2830 at my primary school with an Openreach modem. The 2830 can deliver up to 90mbps and it works well on our FTTC connection which achieves over 70mbps. Its been very stable and has been in service for over a year now. Bought used on eBay for around £50 - at this price I keep a spare ! The 2860 can deliver up to 200mpbs and has the FTTC modem built in like the BT Hub. I think the Drayteks are a good bet - definitely better than a home hub and they can be configured for most scenarios you will meet in a small school. I have static routes configured on mine which work fine.

My primary school is looking to replace some of our ageing interactive whiteboards and projectors. Can anyone recommend AV installers resellers who serve the East Anglia region and specifically Suffolk. We are currently evaluating the Epson interactive projector range but may also consider touch screens if they are price competitive. Thanks

Depends. Are you building a reference machine from scratch and then cloning - or starting with a customised manufacturers installation. If you are doing a scratch build then it makes sense to sysprep before deployment. That's the way I do it. Been using Clonezilla for a few years now and successfully cloned Windows and Linux based systems - invaluable tool.

Service still degraded. Schools Choice/E2BN now have some seriously disgruntled customers who will I'm sure be carefully reviewing their renewals next year.

Email sent to Schools Dear Colleagues, We are working closely with E2BN to resolve the issues with slow internet performance impacting schools across the county. Later today E2BN will be introducing additional hardware which should stabilise internet performance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and are working to restore performance as soon as possible We will keep the broadband information line updated (01473 260136). Regards IT Helpdesk Schools` Choice

There have been emails to Schools and the status line confirms there are problems (but no details on the cause). I heard there was a power outage at one of the Ipswich buildings but nothing more.

There appear to be County wide issues affecting Schools Broadband in Suffolk this week. Many schools have been experiencing intermittent connections and poor performance. This has been going on for about a week now. Does anyone have any further information on what is causing this disruption ?

Mine seems back to normal now. A reminder that the internet is a best effort network and performance is not always as predictable as we would like. I run this utility on my proxy server https://pypi.python.org/pypi/speedtest-cli at 2 hour intervals to show the raw internet speed before Squid and Dansguardian. Quite useful if a teacher reports a slow connection at a particular time of day.

Maybe worth checking your DNS performance. My School seemed to suffer a slowdown last week with similar symptoms. I use Google public DNS at my school. If you have access to squid you can get DNS stats for your site. I don't know if you can do this on Smoothwall.

You can get the default phraselists used by Dansguardian here: DansGuardian Should serve as a good place to start.

Really need a N/W diagram here. How is the proxy server connected into your network ? If your proxy server is connected to your main VLAN it may not be sufficient to have routing enabled on your switches. Packet starting on BYOD VLAN addressed to proxy. Hits switch and is routed to main VLAN and to proxy server. However, if proxy has no routing info for how to reach BYOD subnet it may not be able to send traffic back. Have you tried ping/traceroute to see where packets are going missing ?

I've had a go with Airserver, Reflector and Mirroring360. Now settled with Mirroring360 as it was the simplest to setup and most reliable. Most offer a trial version so give them a go before making your mind up.