grant_girdwood

What happens if you have your proxy settings configured like this (as a test)? http://i.imgur.com/v24rM3Z.png

Hey Luke, If you can download the wpad.dat file from the server then it is unlikely the server is the issue, how are you automatically deploying the wpad file? DNS or DHCP? If DNS have you ensured that wpad is removed from the microsoft DNS blacklist? If DHCP are you aware that not all browsers support this? You should also try setting the auto-configuration URL on a machine that has the problem to be http://wpad/wpad.dat, uncheck the automatically detect settings and give it a test so you can make sure that by manually setting the WPAD file in the browser that it will work. Cheers, Grant

No problem at all - would be good to hear how you get on - good luck! Cheers!

Hy Symbiosis, there is a solutions document on the Bloxx Service Portal, you'll need a login to view it - https://service.bloxx.com/support/solutions/articles/3000017550 - if you continue to have issues give the support guys a call and they'll be able to investigate further for you. Cheers, Grant

I've fallen for that before, it could be an issue with the local device - the IE caching has caught me out a few times (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/271361) and another gotcha could be in IE11, SPDY support was added which can result with sites failing to load first time - could be an idea disabling SPDY in IE just in case this is causing the issue - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/dn265035(v=vs.85).aspx - try disabling SPDY/3 in advanced settings... Hope this helps!

Is there any specific browser/OS that this is affecting or happening across multiple? If you're happy that the pac file is being applied correctly then it could be an issue with your squid proxy, you'll want to have a look through the squid logs to see if you can find any errors that show up when the users are experiencing this issue. Wireshark on the client machine and tcpdumps on your squid proxy would be my next steps once I was happy the pac file is being applied correctly .

As FN-GM has said it could be down to the way that the file is being pushed out, you'll want to watch out for automatic proxy caching in IE - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/271361 As an aside you'll find this tool very useful for testing your pac file syntax and rules - https://github.com/pacparser/pacparser

Thanks for the feedback folks, certainly useful to see what your views are on this area and what you do By no means was this intended to teach any of you to suck eggs as this certainly isn't new to most of us but I thought it would be best to share! Hopefully the channel 4 news article will be useful to back up some IT admins as to why this angle of filtering is taken with Twitter in particular. The vast majority of Twitter users won't come across this type of adult content, however we all know that it is pretty easy to gain access to! It will continue as long as Twitter do not have any "community guidelines" on adult content being shared on Twitter. Hopefully their approach will change or add some safe search style functionality where it can be enforced by filtering solutions Cheers, Grant

I came across this interesting article from Channel 4 News - (One in every thousand tweets is porn - Channel 4 News) which really just confirms what we all know in that Twitter hosts a lot of porn, so it got me thinking, what do schools do? I've come across schools that block/allow twitter completely, some allow access to a specific page and others try to apply social media controls such as read-only access. I'm interested in what your approach to Twitter in Education is?

Hey Adam, They did say something to our product manager about better methods of getting videos in to YouTube Education, I wasn't there so can't say exactly - will try and find out for you next week once the post BETT fatigue wears off Have a good weekend. Cheers, Grant

They have a fair few! sparklebox.co.uk sparklebox.org.uk sparkleboxres.co.uk mysparklebox.co.uk sparkleboxteacherresources.ltd.uk sparklebox.me.uk sparkleplus.co.uk Why they have so many I do not know! Edit: They probably have a lot more.

Just an update, our product manager headed over to Google today @ BETT and it just so happened one of the Google product managers were there The Google PM advised that YouTube for Schools is not going away and that there is a lot of extensive development work being put in to this with a relaunch coming later this year adding lots of new functionality. We brought up the sign up issue and they advised that this is something they are aware of and there are "reasons" for it. Hopefully that answers some questions, I'm rather excited to see what they bring with the relaunch! Cheers, Grant

Ah the trade show fatigue - I was only down for the one day this year (helps to keep me sane!) It looks like a Light speed specific issue with how they integrate YouTube and their My Big Campus module (Maintenance Advisory: YouTube in My Big Campus – Update (December 3, 2014) | Lightspeed Systems Community Site)

You may of checked this already but have you had a look over your firewall rules / port rules for the unauthenticated group?

Interesting, we've certainly not heard anything about this. I ponder if Rob was getting mixed up with YouTube Safety Mode which you can use the same Google SSL Safe Search DNS trick to enforce YouTube Safety Mode without the need to decrypt the SSL request.

Hi Paul, You'll need some changes so that the SSL traffic points to the SSLI port. I can have one of our engineers give you a call to run through with you if you like? Just PM me your details and I'll raise a support call for you. Cheers, Grant

For web hosting I've personally moved to a company called servage.net a number of years ago. Under a fiver a month and you get Unlimited disk space, bandwidth and a lot more - worth having a look - Technical Website Hosting Features | Servage Web Hosting Grant p.s. I'm in no way affiliated with servage

Thanks for the feedback, will pass this on internally and hope to have this pushed out in 2015

Hi! There are a couple of different ways you can configure the appliance depending on where the appliance sits in your network, the good news is that by deploying the appliance in a transparent/intercepting method of deployment you will still be able to use the appliance as a proxy for your domain machines. Deployment options with a quick blurb below ; Intercepting - In Line, this is where the appliance essentially acts as a bridge where you have your switch going in to your int/eth0 port and your firewall going in to ext/eth1, it will detect and filter HTTP/HTTPS traffic and push the rest on to your firewall. Intercepting - Gateway, this is where your clients have Bloxx configured as their default gateway - the unit will detect and filter HTTP/HTTPS traffic and everything else will go to the default gateway that is configured for Bloxx. Intercepting - WCCPv2, this is a Cisco protocol and will require Cisco equipment, you configure your Cisco Kit with WCCP that essentially pushes all port HTTP/HTTPS traffic to Bloxx for filtering. If you have multiple appliances WCCP has built-in load balancing and fault tolerance Intercepting - Policy Based Routing, this is kind of similar to WCCPv2 where your layer 3 switch is configured to set the next hop for HTTP/HTTPS traffic to be Bloxx, the switch forwards the traffic to Bloxx where it will filter the requests. You may need to reconfigure your identification methods as NTLM/Kerberos is not supported in a transparent/intercepting method of deployment so it would really depend how the appliance is configured. If you need assistance changing the deployment let me know and I can have a support call raised and schedule in one of the engineers to give you a call to walk through/set up with you. Cheers, Grant

Hey Jaf, The new Bloxx appliance shouldn't introduce any issues with this software, if you'd like our support team to double check to rule us out just give us a call/email. Thanks, Grant

No problem at all - have a good weekend

Oh yeah, the computer list is imported/updated from your AD via the LDAP import that is configured on the appliance.

Yep, you can create a network zone and within that it can a mixture of computers / subnets that you can subsequently delegate access to through your delegated admins. Delegated admins can then log on to the portal and disable internet access for that zone/sin bin individual users/view reports if you give them permission to Cheers!

Hi guys, Regarding room level filtering, in Version 7 we introduce multiple ways this can be achieved; Zone level filtering which expands in to; Zone level filtering by Subnet Zone Level filtering by Computer Name(s) To name a few, if you have any further queries regarding this I'm happy to answer them here/PM/via Support. Cheers, Grant

Just as an aside I've been playing around with both apps morning and can see that the Puffin Browser & Puffin Academy App connect to the same servers, so be careful when attempting to allow the servers for Puffin Academy as you may inadvertently allow the Puffin Browser app which I'm sure nobody wants to do