Michael

Afternoon all, The instructions supplied by Arbor here are not clear. What steps did you take so emails generated by Arbor are not being sent to Junk on a vanilla O365 setup.

In my experience, if you're fortunate enough to have a decent internet connection (minimum 100Mb lease line), a caching server makes little difference. If anything WUfB is far more efficient than WSUS as a comparison.

I'd interpret DfE guidelines as 'best case scenario' or 'money no object' for new implementations. I agree in principle with most what's being recommended/suggested, but there is a caveat to all this in regards to switching speeds. Given that there's a huge shift to cloud services and ultimately the gold standard is 1Gbps out to the internet, I really question the need/requirement for 40Gbps DACs. 10Gbps DACs would still suffice, given the cloud destination is being throttled by your 1Gbps connection out, when it'll probably only accept or need a fraction of bandwidth per connected device anyway. Cloud services are generally far more efficient than local or legacy services. The DfE also need to move away from Primary vs Secondary models - similar to funding, it's all done on pupil numbers. This directly influences the total number of devices, but more crucially, the number of concurrently used devices.

These are my views - - I've never come across any other contract ICT or not which is for 25 years+ - The world of connectivity, speeds, grades of fibre etc... is changing rapidly - Will any LA be providing ICT services in 25 years? - Using Birmingham LA as an example, a lot has changed in the last 5 years - I consider three years as an optimum contract period, especially for connectivity. - Lastly unless you're a large Secondary in 2022, 1Gb probably isn't necessary, but provisioning say 100Mb or 200Mb+ on a 1Gb bearer would be my advice to any school where infrastructure allows it.

Morning all, If you're running Google Chrome 99.0.4844.51 and open an O365 Shared Mailbox, if you search and click on an email it doesn't display, complaining of network problems. If you manually find the email and click on it (without searching) it works fine. The strange thing is users can still search on their own native mailbox without issues. The workaround (ironically), is Internet Explorer which works fine, ruling out connectivity, filtering, firewall etc... Anyone else observed this?

It's a feature within the Google Drive App, so you can't copy it elsewhere. It's like a temporary/encrypted cache effectively.

I have the answer!!! Google were very helpful. In the above scenario, once the author revokes the anonymous link, this will also delete files 'Mark available offline' when it next checks in to Google.

Hi all, I have a school who've uploaded a recording to Google Drive, made the link anonymous and enabled the option not to Download. At this point, everything's working as expected. If however you have a device with the Google Drive App installed, you're still given the option to 'Make Available Offline' which appears to completely bypass everything above. Is this genuinely a Google oversight or am I missing something I can prevent this? TIA.

Again that's more useful information, as the LAN's quiet. Are devices typically left on, or is everything classroom based switched off every night?

And presumably, despite all our contributions, it has nothing to do with this?

I don't know too much about Mikrotik either, but they're marginally cheaper than say a Ubiquiti Edge Router. Nevertheless, I come across this a lot, if it's supplied by an ISP then the ISP should be able to manage/monitor it and view logs etc... even if the customer can't. I'd like to think SB have already escalated this to BT just to rule out issues if everything checks out.

For the purpose of testing, Google DNS is fine, as essentially we want to test anything internet. Agreed if everything else was disconnected, it can't possibly be the LAN. You can always try a different cable into the LAN and a different switch port, but then we start to exhaust possibilities. It's also super important to relay this info to your ISP, as it narrows down the possibilities greatly being a local issue.

So hopefully they'll be a few Ethernet ports on the Mikrotik available which can be re-purposed, ready with a device and a static IP. The important aspect also is to deliberately remove the Ethernet cable plugging into your LAN, so it's completely isolated to just one device. Be interesting to know the results

What are you using as an edge router? Try using an unused Ethernet port, along with a device configured with a static IP ready. This is a simple enough test, which will immediately prove if it's a LAN issue or not.

It probably works, but Microsoft don't support it. I suspect these days, it'll probably be blocked though.

I deploy Office 2016 32Bit and use 32Bit ADMX templates, so I suspect the templates/Office versions need to match? Going forward, I probably would deploy 64Bit versions of Office when adopting a newer version.

There is some logic - LTSC is static - just security updates and likewise Office 2016/2019/2021 just security updates. O365 Apps are all dynamic on the other hand and update regularly. I think there's a market for both, but unfortunately I still prefer static versions.

You'll probably find there's nothing referencing Office 2019 either. Proves that there isn't massive differences between Office 2016/2019/2021. Similarly to Windows 10 LTSC 1809 being in support longer than Windows 10 LTSC 2021, Office 2016 will be in support longer than Office 2021.

It gets more bizarre as Windows Server 2022 is supported until 14/10/2031 Windows 10 LTSC 21 is supported until 12/01/2027 & Windows 10 LTSC 21 IoT is supported until 13/01/2032 I wish someone from Microsoft would respond as to the rational thinking behind this?

To be honest, this is why I generally hold off for 30 days using WUfB, (all controlled via GPOs) so if Microsoft bodge a monthly update, everything else continues working. I can then perform isolated tests and allows more time for decision making also.

In regards to these errors: Either disable the Windows Firewall on the LAN, but enabled off the LAN (how I generally do things via GPO) or enable these TCP ports - I'm currently in the process of manually updating a few Server 2016 DCs to 14393.4771, which should bypass 14393.4770 altogether. The registry tweak is entirely optional, but I'd suggest leaving as default for now (do nothing).

If you scroll down here, it describes the error on Server 2016.

Separately, there are no November print related updates - security or not, again as far as I can tell looking at release notes.

I know Microsoft have released out-of-band updates for Server 2016 and Server 2019 (on November 14th) but nothing for Server 2012 or R2. Still only the November 9th update. Are domain users unable to authenticate, or is it just event logs filling up? It's more an issue for DCs rather than servers hosting other roles (as far as I can tell)!

So typically two schools and two domains would/could be linked using a Site to Site VPN, unless it's literally across a playground with an on site fibre link. To RDP offsite into school, usually a VPN is needed, then RDP. RDP-ing over the internet without VPN is how a lot of schools are being targeted, but I'm sure you know this!