IrritableTech

Congratulations Tony. Sounds like the perfect role for you and you've become the perfect resource for us. Win win! Great news.

I've been using Unifi kit at home for the last four years. Just upgraded two of my three access points to the AC-Lite. Controller software now runs on a RPi and last month I grabbed a EdgeRouter Lite. The kids, guests and IoT devices have their own SSIDs and Vlans Works like a charm. I haven't yet setup the captive portal and a payment gateway for the kids in the park over the road - one day.

Is this a virtual server or physical? If it's virtual you might need to turn off the time synchronisation service or similar.

Our primaries all use asynchronous lines and have never had an issue with upload speed really. None of them host anything, and any off site backups are done overnight. We host a few bits here ourselves so a synchronous line is pretty much required.

I made a reader using an arduino and a PN532 module. I keep meaning to make it self contained with a LCD screen to display the number - one of these days.

Have you contacted your ISP or do you have access to your firewall - it might have a VPN already setup or available to you?

We've been a happy Schools Broadband customer for nearly four years (we renewed last year) across our MAT and some other schools we work with. Thankfully for us our cluster of lightspeed rockets has been very reliable over that period as too has our various FTTC, EoFTTC and leased lines. As you've heard some customers have had some trouble with one of the clusters in particular and those issues are well documented on here by those who were suffering them. We've found that helpdesk staff are in the main knowledgeable and sales staff are keen to provide the right solution for the school and ensure schools are happy. The only other company in your list I have had experience with is Exa. They provide to one of the primary schools we support. I spent quite a bit of time looking at their product last time around and the team are great. Friendly, knowledgeable and accommodating. They use a different pricing structure however and throttle bandwidth - I found if you want to max out the FTTC connections they end up being not quite so competitive. I've heard excellent things for a number of years regarding their connectivity and I was glad to see last year that their in house filtering product was getting a major over haul. Previous to this I think most secondaries were popping additional filtering on the line and primary schools were just setting and forgetting. Sadly no monitoring was really possible. Hopefully the new version is doing everything it should now it's a year old. I think the possibilities are very interesting for the future with what David alluded to. ISPs being able to provide equipment at both ends of a BT fibre opens up an interesting dimention - and fingers crossed a good bit of competition and price reductions!

That's an option usually found in your edge filter - which internet filter prosuct are you using?

Issue is unless you can quickly identify the exact user who is causing a concern you may not be safeguarding as much as you hope. Also consider your prevent duty - how can you be sure who is promoting extremeism if it ever happend? First step to safeguard and cover the organisation I think is to look at proper account management. Then start looking at bolt on services.

I wasn't party to the original contract here but I always assumed we'd bought the equipment outright? Not the case then? An iPad mini and the swivl with it's microphone is a reasonable solution for recording a class. We've used the google drive app on some ipads here in the past set to auto backup the videos so there is little human intervention. The video can then be shared from there with who ever needs it.

So I was basically right? Ha!

Ever lasting lollipop?

Still using the dude here. It monitors our core network, access points, servers and printers. Very handy.

Right click on the Highest level in the PCs Tree on the left and click Settings. in the right hand column you'll find Auto Discovery and you can turn it off in there.

I think @Davit2005 makes a good shout - any new devices on the network recently that might be causing lots of broadcast? Otherwise if you can, nip onto your core switch and enable a mirror port. Then connect a laptop to it and run wireshark. You'll soon find out which device is broadcasting more than it should. If you do get the time though - separate VLANs is the way to go in future.

Yeah we take this view here too. If your AD is well structured you can quickly find where a machine is without the need for the room in it's name. I just can't see the advantage of naming them on a location basis. You potentially loose a lot of history for each machine each time you rename them. In a IT room we place consecutive numbered machines in a sensible pattern to help the teachers find the machine in classroom management software - but more often than not it will list by username anyway. I find naming office machines after people or even roles soon causes confusion - people tend to move on and job titles change more frequently than machines rotate!

Just had this from Edmodo... so if you or your school have been using it be on the look out for phishing emails. Oh and change your passwords.

Have you tried the reg hack and if it works why is that not satisfactory? Have to say Netsupport DNA is the best piece of software I've bought in a long while. For the record we push the agent out via GPO onto an standard image which has never had it installed before.

Our guest network is filtered based on sixth form level - it includes some social networking. We get asked for a guest pass I'd say weekly. Mostly these are guests who are doing some kind of workshop or presentation to students. Most have brought a laptop to work with and some may even be doing presentations on social networks. Passes are created for a suitable length of time and generally only allow one device to be connected to our ruckus wifi network. BYOD-wise we primarily use three SSIDs - one for provisioning which doesn't have a password. One for staff to use and one for sixth form. The staff and sixth form SSIDs are secured using unique passcodes for each device. Sixth form are limited to a couple of devices. We throttle the connection of these networks a bit but it has never really been an issue. Sixth form get exactly the same level of filtering on the wifi as they do on the PCs - as do staff. We've taken the view that allowing social networking for sixth form allows us to intervene if they are making mistakes. Reducing the blocked list and increasing the monitoring. We've lost the opportunity to intervene if they use 3/4G.

Our MAT uses Schools ICT Services here in Leeds although I think they're happy to support schools in a much wider area these days.

Buy a none contact detector - please!

I might have a couple of spare switches and modules for the next week. I'll pm you.

I might have a couple of spare switches and modules for the next week. I'll pm you.

I hate media converters - they are possibly the most unreliable bit of kit we've now thankfully eradicated from the network here. We had a similar issue to this - had a company out to test and they found no issue on any of the cores. Popped a proper fibre module into the switch and away it went and five or six years later it is still working fine. Leeds fibre people... perhaps SICL or Datacable can help?

Looking good - given the history though your fire officer might get nervous about the flags in your languages room.