Primus

I'd bin the stick and use a new one - you can't trust that now.

That's just ridiculous - Ofsted once again showing they show zero care for the schools they inspect.

Brimstone will be along shortly to tell you Microsoft themselves don't even use InTune for their iPads.

The NHBC is worth sweet FA. Do not rely on it.

As previously said - £40k is not as generous as it may seem. We have around 1100 students and 160 staff and with all our subscriptions: MS, Adobe, Veeam, NetSupport, SIMS licensing etc are already at £39k. What exactly is coming out of the £40k - telephones? broadband? filtering? What licenses do you currently spend on?

Speaking to a human at Google is as easy as can be - ring their number listed on the admin console, enter the pin and go through one simple menu. Call answered by a human in under a minute every time I've needed to call.

Try it and see - I don't think you'll see the issues you expect to be honest.

I should point out we have a 1Gb symmetric connection but to be honest we don't ever hammer it so I don't think you'd have much of an issue on a slower connection. We have 1100 students, 160 staff and about 400 desktop PCs and 300 Chromebooks.

Yes they do but it remembers them using their local profile - they tend to sit in the same seats each lesson. No issues whatsoever.

We let students use it - our photography students use it exclusively for storing all of their many many huge images and we've had zero problems.

Ok no worries. We don't use RADIUS assigned vLANs but we do use NPS and RADIUS and have none of those issues at all.

That thread is about issues with RADIUS assigned vLANs - what have you tried to fix the issue? For example could you have separate SSIDs for each vLAN?

We don't use Radius assigned vLANs but when I did last summer as part of my initial testing I didn't see this. You could try testing an older version of the controller and AP firmware. Given the price difference I'd be looking at what I could do to allow us to still go with Unifi even if this affected how I wanted to run things. Our top price (including PoE switches) and circa 100 APs was £100k with Ruckus - granted that was indicative pricing with no discount - Unifi cost us less than £15k for the same number of switches and APs. Even after negotiation it was still substantially cheaper than Aruba, Meraki, Aerohive etc.

What's the issue with Unifi? Ours is working perfectly and has been since we installed it last summer.

Did you pay them the £250 for the CSV download to allow for this data migration?

Anyone found a PDF map for this year? Trying to plan and finding their app is hopless!

AlanD is talking about a hardware restriction - the more powerful Smoothwall appliances are required for higher speed connections. Eg. we had to go for an S-14 for gigabit as the S-10 model at the time either didn't exist or hadn't been updated to be powerful enough to be able to handle gigabit.

1. Secondary school with college 2. About 1300 users 3. 1000mb symmetrical with 80mb backup connection 4. Leased line plus FTTC backup 5. £9600 per year

How did people communicate their decision not to renew - I know MLS have a lengthy notice period but I've been emailing [email protected] regularly since early December with zero reply!

You're aware that's just an infographic right??? https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/articles/problems-forcing-regular-password-expiry

Why force changes at all? NCSC guidance is quite clear.

Why on earth would I want to discuss it further?! Your blog and posts on here make it clear you're on some kind of uninformed crusade - you do not understand the context schools are working in or the technology schools are using.

Nope you're still talking nonsense and I'd have zero interest in reading anything produced by you or your organisation. If I was a supplier I'd tell you to stop wasting my time and get lost!

So you commented on an article that is so factually inaccurate the newspaper concerned had to remove it but you aren't prepared to remove your own commentary? You then further acknowledge that you are seeking further information from NetSupport's MD about how the product works but you feel qualified to give such a commentary in advance? If you're looking to work with the industry that produces these products and the schools that use them then this is most certainly not the way to do it! Your commentary on this matter comes across as nothing more than uninformed scaremongering and the original article being pulled is testimony to that.

With respect no further action being taken on a referral does not mean that schools are "over-referring". On the subject of staff concerns I'd like to know how many of them actually understand the technology they are concerned about - people can often be afraid of things that they do not understand. In my opinion your website and blog are incredibly alarmist and without a factual underpinning - have you ever actually worked in a school? Do you have a technical background to be able to understand the claims you are making? I notice you have declined to take down your blog in response to the DNA newspaper article - the commentary on it is most amusing - why on earth would children or their parents be able to control the settings of a piece of software which solely runs on school owned computers and within the school's network? When I worked in industry if I used the employer's computer or Internet connection I was under no illusions that this is their equipment and connection and they are able to see what I am doing and where I am going - why should it be any different for a child in a school?