Sam3773

Thanks everyone for the replies and the messages! I've been demo'd some kit already and am looking to contact a few more people from the Firewall/web filter point of view. I have to say, I'm impressed with Smoothwall at the moment, but by no means fixated on it. Finding it hard to find a good Email Filter though. Not sure how good SmoothWall's is. Had a quote from EPA (Fusemail now) and they seem a little on the steep side. Anyone have any ideas? Cheers, Sam.

Cheers guys. Dropped a few emails and calls out and am talking to Smoothwall tomorrow. I know a lot of you use Smoothwall so.. Thoughts? Easy to use? Good bit of kit?

Thanks Oaktech, I'll take a look at those. Not sure on budget. The renewal we binned was £20k for 3 years support. If we can get something that'll replace our now very aged firewall, even better.

Hi Guys, Having been conned a little, we've cancelled a renewal for our Web filtering and Email filtering software and are now looking for alternatives. So far I've been tasked with looking at Smoothwall and a Sothos UTM for web filtering. No idea in terms of email filtering. Really, what does everyone else use? We have simple needs! BYOD, transparent proxying, AD integration and a boat load of features? Cheers, Sam.

New head has decided to move everyone, so we're moving computers and phone extensions everywhere. Rolling out Office 2013 and Visual Studio 2013. Re-patching and tidying up about 10 comms cabinets. Configuring 16 iPad airs. Testing pool tables. This is my favorite.

Well, I only started here a month and a half ago and a week before I started we renewed our WebMarshal contract. I would avoid it like the plague in this instance. You can't set them up as transparent proxies, so the only way to use them is by manual input/PAC file and PAC files are unreliable for a lot of tablets and phones. It's definitely clear that you get what you pay for with filtering systems. I think WebMarshal is on the cheap side as it lacks a lot of functionality. When it comes to our next renewal, I'll be heavily pushing for another solution such as Smoothwall!

We use WebMarshal and it's not at all handy for transparent proxy set-up. I agree though, that does look to be the answer. Cheers guys!

Hi Guys, I've had a look through the forums but can't see anything. At the moment in our college we have a large network of Xirrus Wifi points and allow students to connect their phones, tablets, etc up to them. The problem is, they have to manually input the proxy details for our filtering server to get out to the net. I've been trying to think of a way around this I could implement over summer, but WPAD doesn't seem to work well with mobile devices. Can anyone think of any ideas? Or is manual entry the best way? Cheers, Sam.

Cheers guys. It does all seem a bit forced from my current company. We're not that big. I'd say about 2000 clients across 40 clients.

Started using Vipre AV recently. Really simple and quite good if you use something like GFI cloud to centrally manage it.

Well today I had the dreaded 'counter offer' from my employer. While I'm fine with this and know that my excitement for my new path is too great to pass up on, he did suggest that there was a 'stigma' attached to public sector IT staff and I'd struggle getting a job later down the line. I'm pretty sure this is just a ploy to convince me to stay, but has anyone here ever faced any kind of stigma coming from the public sector? I can't see why there would be. Any way, anxious times ahead waiting for my DBS to come back and then hopefully starting the 2nd of June. Exciting stuff!

I have already been told by my new boss to expect keys being changed around on keyboards and other 'pranks' students play. I'm excited to get stuck in! I also love that there's a community for this. I imagine a lot of applications and tech are similar between educational institutions? Either way, I'm looking forward to lurking the Edugeek forum a bit more. I'm in that 'honeymoon' period at the moment where I'm just reading everything!

Thanks everyone! I'm most excited about the reward aspect. I've always worked for companies who about profitability and nothing else, particularly in an MSP. My day isn't about IT anymore, it's about how many hours I'm billing etc. I can't begin to describe the feeling of moving away from that.

Hi all, I've just accepted a job offer at a local college to become a 2nd line support technician. I'm coming from a 1st line role in an MSP and haven't worked in education before so.. What am I letting myself in for?! From what I've seen/heard so far I'm in for a bit of a challenge but I'm excited anyway! Thanks in advance and I look forward to lurking the Edugeek forums more. Sam. PS. Not sure if this is in the right area but it seems more 'general' than anything.