SchoolsBroadband

We already do 10 Gbps connections to schools but alas we have to pay for it from different carriers so can't provide it for free unfortunately although it will be very competitive! Dave

Yep all fixed. Appeared to be a firewall issue of all things. The guys will update you by the normal channels shortly. Dave

Yes we've some issues following maintenance last night. The team are already on it and comms are out. Davd

Good morning everyone, I can assure you your support requests definitely aren't ignored! I can confirm that the proxy issue has been fixed. We've moved moved majority of customers off our old proxy solution and migrated then to our standard transparent proxy solution instead. We'd love to move any of you left on there. Please contact our support team to get this actioned. We'll be in touch directly over the next month or so to all remaining customers too. Thanks for your patience and sorry for the issue. If you still think you have a problem please call the team and mention this thread and that its a noc issue specifically but it should now be fixed. Dave

Hi folks. Sorry for my late response I'm on holiday at the moment. I've just messaged my cto who will update me soon I'm sure and I'll post here. We've been doing a major data centre move over the past couple of weeks so it could potentially be linked to this but I'll confirm and get back to you. Thanks for your patience. Dave

You're welcome !

Yes our old Lightspeed clusters couldn't have two customers with the same ip address on them. One of the reasons we moved to Netsweeper as that can and was written specifically for us. @BrotherSidious do send me a pm with the case reference and I'll escalate for you if need be. There's also the escalation contacts in the service manual you should have too. Thanks Dave

I'm sorry to hear that sippo. If you are due any service credits they will be paid. Please send me a pm Also an official thank you for being a previous reference site too. We've invested a lot in our support over the past 2 years and on the whole things have improved although there's always work to do We've had a new supportanager for the past year that has changed the way we do a lot of things Our current customer satisfaction scores for the past few months is averaging 9/10 too although I am realistic and there are always some things we can do better. Do send me a pm @sippo as it would be good to chat once I'm back off my holiday next week. Thanks Dave

Hi @speakercon, that shouldn't be the case as we have the facility to use overlapping IP's specifically to avoid this which is something Netsweeper actually built specifically for us. I can't comment as to why @BrotherSidious had to do this without further looking into it. @speakercon if you want to send me over your internal IP's in a PM i'll confirm with the build team if it would be a problem (which I highly doubt). That said if you use 127.0.0.x then it could be an issue Thanks Dave

Hi @Sonic007 If you have ssl decryption disabled then you can't decrypt sites such as Google so you can't report on what's inside the packets. The biggest debatable issue this throws up is not being able to run reports on what people have searched for in Google for example as you cNt see inside the encrypted packets when not doing man in the middle ssl decryption. Schools have different policies for devices not controlled by the school. I.e byod some don't decrypt, others do but throw up a splash page where users can download the certificate themselves and install it on their device. Either is possible. Some schools also make fancy captive portal pages showing how to do this. It's entirely up to you and your schools esafety policy ultimately we can achieve either method. I'd suggest having byod on a completely separate vlan / ssid so they can have their own specific filtering policy. If you need any help let me know and I'll get an engineer to give you a call. Thanks Dave

Hi Mike, We have unlimited usage sim cards on something allied a private apn. A private Apn allows us to connect a mobile network to our isp network in exactly the same way we can for leased lines and general broadband. This means we can do transparent filtering which is all cloud based. No proxy, no pac files, nothing! It just works! If you're a customer of ours then you can have the same filtering profiles as you do in school. We integrate with all major authentication services and have full prevent reporting as standard. It was my understanding that the dfe service used a form of netsweeper which is what we use. In the first six months after lockdown we connected nearly 4000 sim cards with one trust taking over 600 from us. You can use your existing hardware too. If its of interest do send me a pm. Thanks Dave

That's not the case. We are trialling outsourced support for connectivity faults only as they are pretty generic issues to any ISP and those engineers don't need to have the additional skillsets ours do. All firewall, filtering, VoIP and other services continue to be handled by our normal team. Thanks Dave

Hi guys, we do support multiple OS's so I've sent @paulkerton a message to discuss so we can get to the bottom of his issues. We have a new reporting engine which will be released this year which is super fast and completely bespoke to us. No other Netsweeper provider will have it as we've developed it internally. It will be a big improvement over the current one. @speakercon the amount of calls you make regarding connectivity should be minimal unless there is a mass outage for some reason in which case we proactively email our customers and put a phone message on if that ever happens. The amount of calls about filtering is dependent on your skill and your ability to learn how to use Netsweeper (as with anything you get out what you put in). It's also dependent on your default setup. Some customers like it more restrictive than others. The more restrictive it is the more blocking will occur which if you're not up to speed with how to unblock and diagnose can mean excess calls to the help desk. We'll be doing some more free training on Fortigate and Netsweeper which we do a few times a year. We often invite customers into our office but due to the pandemic we'll probably do this over Teams or Zoom. Thanks for considering us. Dave

Fortinet, Fortinet and more Fortinet

Hello everyone, I just received the below email from the DFE so I thought I'd share it with the community as I know many of your got tablets, 4G etc from the DFE Dear colleague, Laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers were provided by the Department for Education (DfE) to support remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a supplier that provides schools, colleges, local authorities or trusts with IT support, you may have been involved with helping set these devices up. We are contacting those who placed orders explaining actions required to continue using these devices. They may be in touch with you regarding supporting them with these processes. Resetting laptops and tablets After 30 September 2021, Microsoft Intune and Cisco Umbrella licenses will expire on ‘Restricted’ Windows devices provided by DfE. Users will be able to freely access any online content and devices will not be maintained with future updates and software upgrades. It’s the responsibility of schools, colleges, local authorities and trusts to safeguard the young people in their care. This guide to resetting laptops and tablets includes information on how to reset passwords for different types of device. This will allow them to be restored to factory settings so new security software can be applied. There are no actions required for ‘Standard’ Windows devices that were provided without security settings. Resetting routers Huawei routers need to be reset by 16 July 2021 so they can continue to be used. TP-Link or D-Link routers, can be reset at any time. DfE will stop providing data to these routers on 31 July 2021. If they are reset before this date, they will stop receiving data from DfE immediately. If you have any questions or encounter issues during the reset process, please contact us. Regards, Get help with technology team https://get-help-with-tech.education.gov.uk/devices/guide-to-resetting-windows-laptops-and-tablets?utm_source=suppliers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=launch_campaign-200521&utm_content=device-reset-home https://get-help-with-tech.education.gov.uk/devices/reset-your-wireless-router?utm_source=suppliers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=launch_campaign-200521&utm_content=router-reset-huawei#if-you-have-a-huawei-router Thanks Dave

Thanks @MJTayloronline, we are trialling outsourced "connectivity down" i.e. generic ISP support to a 3rd party and getting our support team to focus on the more complex Fortinet and Netsweeper cases which requires a much more bespoke skill set. Hence the new menu option. It's very early days at the moment so we don't know if this is something we are going to keep or not as early results are mixed. There's always an amount of time it takes for any new engineers you bring on board (whether outsourced or internal) for them to get up to speed so we're monitoring their progress and improving where we can. Certainly they should attempt to fix a no connectivity issue rather than just log a fault. If you find that's not happening then please do report to Paul who is our Head Of Technical Operations and leading the project. Thanks Dave

@caffrey we're just about to do some changes regarding over blocking. I need to check with the NOC guys but I think we're doing a beta of this imminently so if you'd like to be part of it and give us some feedback do let us know. We've also got a brand new reporting engine we've developed internally which although the current reporting engine is in our opinion fit for purpose the new one is a big improvement and is also fast as grease lightning We've spent a lot of time developing the hub and this is going to be the central repository and interaction point for all of our products in the future. It will take us time to bring them in so you've a single pane of glass effectively but we're well on our way. We've a lot of new stuff coming in the next 12 months which is thanks to the small army of developers we've employed and major network upgrades. Watch out for some excellent pricing / FOC on 10Gbps co-location into your WAN very soon for MATs to help drive private cloud adoption which a lot of our big MATs already do. All of our core hosted services have been solid as a rock for the past 14 months or so. Thanks for considering us @speakercon Dave

Hi Dave, I'm afraid I can't but if its of any help our hosted netsweeper solution works in dozens of languages including Polish. Thanks Dave

Hi @Bruce123, we're the biggest supplier of broadband and filtering to schools in Leeds and have been for the past 6 years or so. I'll send you over a PM if you'd like to talk about work required to move from Leeds to us or another supplier. It's really not that difficult so don't be swayed by a lot of the rubbish we've seen saying why you can't leave your current supplier as much of it isn't true or there are ways to mitigate any impact. Thanks Dave

Hi @enbiggen, why not just get a temporary FTTC connection put into the other server room? If you've copper lines in there already then you should be able to get one put in easily enough and we find them generally more reliable than 4G. Happy to help / price for one if you want just send me a PM. They can be done on a rolling month contract. Thanks Dave

Hi @enbiggen, why not just get a temporary FTTC connection put into the other server room? If you've copper lines in there already then you should be able to get one put in easily enough and we find them generally more reliable than 4G. Happy to help / price for one if you want just send me a PM. They can be done on a rolling month contract. Thanks Dave

Hi @jawebber, that's something we can do via our cloud based netsweeper solution no problem. We can give users the same filtering as they have in school and its pretty easy to roll out. Do give the sales team a buzz if its of interest. Thanks Dave

Hi @TJ7, this is something we can do for you via our Cloud Based Netwsweeper platform. If you give the team a call on 0 11 33 222 333 we'll get a quote over and can get you setup in no time at all. Alternatively send me a PM Thanks Dave

@Sonic007 thanks very much for your support and welcome to our service

Hi @nathan Netsweeper does support numerous different languages including search terms. Dave