Gongalong

We do use OneDrive, but this seems to be something particular to the Office install on the laptop. The student can use their account elsewhere, and any other account we try to use on the affected PC gives the same behaviour. It's the same two laptops where we've had this before with the same students, and as an Office reinstall didn't work we went for the next quickest option of a rebuild.

Hi All, We’ve got a recurring issue with Office 365 on a handful of classroom PCs. Students open an office app e.g. Word, click on the “sign in” box, and rather than being prompted for credentials it takes them to the app but shows an activation bar. It still isn’t possible to sign in, and closing and reopening the app on any user account has the same behaviour. Reinstalling Office doesn’t fix it, so the solution for the moment is rebuilding the laptop with MEMCM. Anyone else had this? I’m not 100% convinced the students aren’t causing it because it’s recurred with some laptops used by the same students. The students aren’t being forthcoming if they are causing it. A more elegant fix than rebuilding would be ideal! 😊 Thanks

We've used SCOPAY for 15+ years. Not amazing, but I'm not sure anyone in the market is. Problems do get resolved and they seem competent enough.

In my experience, a camera with a basic flash tends to end up with a pretty awful photo. Better to get something with a fast lens, depending how detailed you want to get. You can get some fast prime lenses relatively cheaply e.g. the Canon 50mm, but anything wide angle or telephoto will be very expensive.

Ours is set to "System internal DNS server", with the protective DNS servers in forwarders.

In case anyone here knows, including Tom, when I enter a website name into the Chrome browser, is that resolved via the client's (Windows in this case) DNS or the Smoothwall appliance?

I'm not sure. Best to check with Smoothwall support if nobody else here knows. Network stuff makes my brain hurt!

Yes to setting up on the Smoothwall, under Services. Perhaps it causes a system load issue, not that the appliance has reported a problem *shrug* I put each SSID on a separate VLAN, as we definitely don't want traffic on our VISITOR wi-fi talking to the staff LAN. And ditto for the other wireless networks (we upped it to four). For the gateway question, each VLAN is going to need its own gateway. Best to check with Smoothwall support. My experience with Smoothwall support isn't terrible, but the last few years the response time has got longer and longer, to the point now where it's 1-2 weeks. I also felt the network support was a bit lacking, but I was dependent on their advice as it's their system. We did get there in the end.

How much budget to you have and how are the camera skills of the relevant staff? We started with a low end Canon DSLR 10+ years ago, and recently bought an R6 Mark 1. We have the same problem with hall photos, so I'm looking to get the RF 24mm f1.8 lens next. We also take all staff and some student ID photos. As the photos can be used to market the school, I see it as an important part of that, and worth getting something relatively decent. It does require some skill to get the best from it.

I used the following process when setting up VLANs for different wireless networks. 1. Added new interfaces for the VLANs 2. Added DHCP servers with relevant scope (Smoothwall said it wasn't recommended to use them for DHCP, but it would not have been easy to use another system) 3. Created Locations to cover the DHCP scopes 4. Setup new web authentication proxies to treat the new interfaces appropriately e.g. staff, students (VLANs had to be added on the switches of course, ports taggged) I've also found Smoothwall support to be a bit unhelpful when it came to network config, but did get there in the end.

We use county supplies (https://www.countyofficesupplies.co.uk/) for lots of things. I thought they were originally stationery etc. supplies for Hants CC, but as they're based in Sussex perhaps it was Sussex CC. Anyway, now they're UK wide. They're a bit limited in what they have, so everything else we supplement with places like Amazon etc. We don't have a central stationery budget, it will come from the department's budget. Likewise, each department will store their own stationery.

After the overnight Smoothwall reboot, all has been back to normal since. Coincidence? I did temporarily add google's DNS but have removed again and we're back to protective DNS. We used to get 2-3 power cuts a year here, but none at all in recent years so there's no enforced reboots of all the network gear.

Upload looks good. We've got a synchronous connection, and with a speed test it's actually faster than download.

We've got three DNS servers (VMs) configured with dual CPUs and 4GB of RAM. All seems OK (CPU use is low, 50ish% RAM usage) and PRTG does monitor them for load. I've logged a ticket with Cloudflare, as I can't spot in the dashboard the servers I should be using. Whether coincidental or not, of the two configured forwarders, the first says it's unable to resolve.

Ah, that works! Without the firewall rule switched on that I just created. So ICMP *is* being allowed through the firewall.

Exactly that. Is that since midday yesterday, or has it been longer? I've spotted that the Smoothwall appliance does have a ping function built-in, and that seems fine, but would be good to test from a client PC. Lots of the Smoothwall's diagnostic tests are failing, even though it describes most of the DNS resolution speeds as "speed is optimal". They're all at the tens of milliseconds level, not larger. PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=116 time=5.78 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=116 time=3.34 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=116 time=3.32 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=116 time=3.29 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=5 ttl=116 time=3.31 ms

Internal pings are fine, but I can't ping externally. I've added a rule to allow ICMP on the Smoothwall's firewall, still no joy, so I'll follow up on that with Smoothwall.

Thanks both. I forgot that the usual problem is DNS. We use the NCSC's Protective DNS, and I note that of the two forwarders configured for that, one shows as unable to resolve on our Windows server. Not sure if that could be connected?

I'm pretty sure that the Lightroom catalog can only be on a local disk, which is presumably for speed, although I think Adobe are living somewhat in the dark ages on that score. I think Lightroom will prompt to backup a catalog, but I can't remember offhand if the backup can be on the network.

Hi folks, I'm sure most of us have had "the internet's a bit slow today" from staff without any detail. Ironically, I've had that exact problem yesteday afternoon and today and I'm struggling to find anything that spots a problem. We have 1Gb internet with VMB through a Smoothwall appliance. In terms of monitoring, I use an old version of The Dude to keep an eye on devices being up, but I also monitor link speeds, and nothiing is saturated. I use PRTG to monitor both crucial websites and also servers etc. Since around midday yesteday, PRTG showed most websites as offline, yet I can access them on the server, and on client PCs. Still, things seem sluggish. It seems oddly coincidental that PRTG is showing this downtime. I've tried good ole fast.com, and that shows the internet speed to be as expected. I have set the Smoothwall to reboot at 2am, but might bring that forward to a school day break if I get lots of complaints. I've never needed to reboot Virgin's hardware, but could also do that. Any other suggestions for how to troubleshoot? Thanks

Medhurst https://medhurst-it.com/

I don't think anything in NetSupport is cloud-y, but might be worth double checking with them.

mikkydoos: what features are you after? We've always used the NetSupport suite, which covers a bunch of things.

It was definitely cheaper for us (secondary with 1,200 students), but as above it will be on a part with Arbor/Bromcom if a 50% price rise kicks in for us.

Yes, Optimise and Engage, and support from ParentPay. Oddly, our second year cost went down a few hundred pounds, but I didn't argue. If our next 3 year renewal goes up by 50% it might cause some head scratching here, but I think when we looked at Arbor/Bromcom they were about 50% more expensive. Coincidence?...