AlanD

Given the rush of replies...I’m tempted to suggest a policy. BYOD policy:staff and students are NOT allowed to bring or use their own devices in school. The reality is they all have them...almost without exception. And these days have massive data contracts...probably more than we could give them through wireless...and certainly at higher speeds. And they can and will do what they like regardless of. Policy because you can’t track them, intercept them or prove anything. Can’t understand when we are seemingly so concerned with child safety that governments don’t enforce mobile providers to allow parents and schools to monitor use. It may be that monitoring would require control of some sort...but it needs monitotpring.

I would want at least 2x fibre connections between cabinets...and I’d be looking to put them as a virtual stack...but maybe those switches don’t support that. But I guess they support LAGs so that would give you increased badwidth capacity and redundancy..a double win. And yes I would segregate cctv onto a separate vlan...especially if there is any kind of remote monitoring...because I wouldn’t want any external acccess to where my data is...GDPR and all that... vlans wouldn’t increase your band width of course..but you might make it less of a priority. If you are implying that your network is slow...you need to look at the traffic logs. Often what is described as a slow network...especially by users ...is slow wireless...or slow PCs..or slow sata discs used in a server rather than 10k sas ones. Take care that spending money on network infrastructure isn’t the problem that needs solving.

It always surprises me that there are always deals to be done - but you do have to be prepared to walk away and lose that deal and wait for another. Don't go back every day...leave it a week or so...then tell them you have been looking around...but the price is a bit steep or whatever. ...but yes, you may lose it. And you need a battery of excuses ready ...I can only afford up to....(to which they will then want you to take finance agreement with them...so you'll want another excuse to get out of that...) ...Or my wife will only allow me to spend up to.... And it always helps if you don't give them the impression that you really like potential purchase...but...perhaps at a lower price you would be prepared to over look the colour ..or the wear..or whatever.... In the case of VW make it clear to them that you are looking at SEAT - or SKODA options (both of which have identical engines and geartrains to the VW...and often more included features...but no; they don't have the VW badge). And failing a better price - see if you can get them to agree for a free service (at the end of the year...) ...and definitely a very full tank of petrol....new carpet mats....or whatever. There is a always a danger when dealing with thousands of pounds that a few tens of pounds one way or the other don't matter. You wouldn't throw tenners away from your wallet....so keep haggling to the last fiver. I find much the same approach works with IT suppliers. New touch screens for example - we have a had several hundred pounds taken off their apparently "best deal".

Have you stopped the cards going to sleep for power saving?

...but it will have no FSCS protection....and you are at the mercy of exchange rates (and paying commission - or a poor exchange rate). ...But yes, with a falling pound (Brexit) putting money abroad might be a risk worth taking. While there is risk - you could also consider Unit trusts - which often give returns above 5% over longer periods of time - if you know you can leave it there for 5 years or so.

I would recommend/consider at least two routes to each cabinet. Either as part of a virtual stack/ring or at least something that would allow continued operation even if it meant manually changing connections over - if one of the runs gets broken. (Obviously - be wary about loops - unless your switching can allow for this - many can..if configured). I'd also recommend at least switches in each cabinet - with LAGs. By doing the above - any fibre or module can fail ...or any switch....and the only users affects are those connected to that switch. No affect - if a fibre fails.

I pay £23 a month - for land line and 30Mb/s broadband from sky (which is £5 less than you are paying....and money is money...it all counts....). But yes - you can get large amounts of data on your mobile - without a need for a landline...and even 4K Netflix is rarely over 4Mb/s...but that is 14GB of data to watch a single hour.... I've often thought I could come to an agreement with our neighbours to share a connection....

we have a different "username" format for staff and students...but use the same domain name. Students always have a "year" identifier at the start of their username and so have usernames in the format 13DaviesA@domain wheras staff would be first.surname@domain But we also include a "disclaimer" - in our case added by exchange - but I'm pretty certain you can do this with Office 365....And you can have different disclaimers for different groups....so its possible to add "This email was written by a student at …. school.... "..... or "This email does not necessarily reflect the reviews of the school..."

Why are you replacing them? OM1 work just fine with everything...and work well beyond the “minimum” specs for 10G. I’d be making them a good deal longer than any approximate paced distance...

How complicated do you want it? Are there multiple proxies, multiple sub nets , etc Where are you hosting it? Are you using dhcp with an option to declare it? Or dns or some other means? Can you “see” the file ok from a browser?

Smoothwall...just tick the box to allow social media....or so you might think. The reality is that many of not most apps ...are a nightmare to use with smoothwall (no; they don't tell you this....). To be fair, they are possibly just as problematic with other filtering solutions. Many mobile apps use certificate pining (so you can't use https interception). Some - like spoitfy - need rules in your firewall as well as in your filter. They often use different URLs than the desktop versions.... There are some KB articles on smoothwall's site. ...and I'm not sure about opening these up to students....but staff quite like it....

..I think you can only apply it to folders on the later versions of CC4. If you are still with 2008R2 (CC4.3) I think you can only apply tasks to selected computers.

How did you "learn" to use facebook? Or instagram? You sat in a lesson ...and somebody took you through the steps of what to click and what does what. Of course not....but all too often that is how "teachers" incorrectly teach. The important thing is that teachers make demands of the students. "Use your device to ..." make a video with subtitles about the experiment in science etc. Don't tell them or give them some some recipe of how to do it. Teaching by giving out a recipe is really poor teaching....and whatever the student learn - won't be relevant or true the moment the next generation of devices arrive in their hands. Most of these devices run office 365 apps perfectly well....(or google docs)...and you can do simply amzing things with programing in google docs - to do a mail merge or something getting data from a spreadsheet into word documents or whatever. I don't care if the students ask their parents...ask their friends...google how to do it on youtube...but I'm happpy to dish out 0/10 for the majority of the class that make little effor the first time...and the second time....by the third time....they begin to realise that its themselves that have to do the learning.....you can guide them....I ask someone who completed a task how they found out how to do it...we criticise it...we suggest improvments...why didn't you...etc....and ask the students who failed - what efforts they had made. Initially students hate it...becuase they hae to do the work....but eventually they get good at it.,..really good.... We need students with good - really good ...IT skills....not those those who can simply follow a recipe. How are students going to get these skills unless we make demands and give them opportunities to learn. By far the majority of students leaving sixth form would be unable to use a spreadsheet to record the marks for their exams...and add them up ...and produce a percentage. They wouldn't have a clue where to start....and its shocking. Its the modern day equiavlent of illiteracy. And yes, later some of those students are back in the classroom as teachers - doing their very best to avoid the next next generation gaining those skills.

I often hear this as an argument against tablets...and while I am not enthusiastic about tablets, I think this argument is unfair.....In practice - they are pretty good at creation...and work just fine - well better than fine...recording science results into a spreadsheet to create a graph with formulae or whatever...and they are certainly better than any PC when it comes to creating Audio Visual stuff. And while I agree I wouldn't want to type a long essay ...I'd simply dictate it, as voice recognition is really good these days. In fact, I often see students alone in a corner dictating into a phone - (they are not allowed to use phones during the day - so get challenged) ...only to find they are actually creating text (which they show me...)to later import into a desktop PC. And I think learning to work this way probably makes for a a very efficient process. Microsoft Office (and google docs) work just fine on iPads..for Cloze exercises, and worksheets. ..Learning to type a large amount of text should be a long way down anyone's list of useful ICT skills. Eons ago, in science we had to draw a diagram and write a a description and method for the experiment. These days - get them to video it. Then get them to add some subtitles and headings..produce a report with "stills" taken from the video.... In languages get them to record mini conversations...and again ...get them to produce a video that demonstrates how to ask for something in a shop and ask how much it costs...or whatever. ...They should be embracing technology in everything they do in school...to make its use second nature...and tablets are just great for that (even though I'm not really a fan...)

I assume you are not a DFE school then - as the DFE has allocated domain names - which are I think free....if the form schoolname.county.sch.uk (I didn't know you get "school" as a TLD. I learn something everyday...well...most days.....whether what I learn is useful is another matter...)

I am confused....(easily done...). Are you really saying that your public facing domain email address is [email protected] ? How did you manage to register that? Surely it has to be something like schoolname.sch.uk or schoolname.org.uk... or schoolname.co.uk and must have a registered DNS MX entry. And does your Internal domain name in school have the SAME domain name (which would make for confusion at best....)

As long as everyone remembers that getting the ipads isn't a solution to any problem. Hopefully the problem is "getting students ICT skills". Concentrate on what exactly those skills are...which apps or program might be necessary....what training and support staff will need in advance....what support they will need in the classroom ...how those ipads ...or PCs for that matter might be managed...etc etc... If its just someone's daydream that buying the ipads alone is going to deliver all the above without actually investing in the time and effort ...and yes money ...that all those other things will require...then chances are ipads are not going to deliver anything useful at all...

Which is the reason we moved to do the same...except - they definitely are not allowed any self configuration...otherwise we wouldn't allow then to connect to our network.

...I guess you must be only customer then....

Yes - they work. But there is a problem...and the problem is when you "suspend" those tasks and re-enable them again later (which is why you suspended them rather than deleted them). If after suspending them, they miss their next timeslot (which is more than likely otherwise why did you suspend them) then once you re-enable them...they no longer work....not at all. This is a "known issue"...and one it would seem RM are not going fix (and I have a support thread with them confirming this). Its annoying...because what you need to do is to change the task time by one minute after re-enabling them. This sounds fine - until you have a large network with hundreds of computers - as we tend to in schools...and there are 20 or 30 such tasks (because, yes, you don't want to start hundreds at the same time...and for that matter - not shut down large numbers either - because some users will have left themselves logged on - and timeouts would cause profile to fail to save correctly). We find most RM scheduled tasks are not 100% reliable. There is a service (RM service host) in the clients which I presume "listens" for instructions. The service is prone to stopping. RM's "fix" was to simply restart the service if it stops....but it never actually fixed the underlying problem...and sooner or later the service stops even when it is configured to restart. Once stopped - the RM servers can no longer control the client - until you "remote" to client ...and restart it to clear the problem. Even when the service is running - I have seen clients just sit there...ignoring tasks assigned to run. Even restarting the PCs doesn't help - its like the server has given up on the client. (Maybe the server RM host service has a similar bug). Once a couple of days has past (or if you restart the server)…something must timeout...as the task then magically runs when you reassign the same task - despite having that same task pending for the previous days Its not mission critical....but its bloody annoying.....like the fact the right click stops working in RMMC console after a period of use.

We changed from desktop to laptops...partly because of demand for devices which could be used at home etc. and also because of GDPR we were concerned about "leakage" of data if staff used their own devices/laptops at home. This also allowed us to trim back on the number of PCs - as we had the luxury or underused classrooms, as well as "offices" and common room areas which no longer needed fixed PCs. Ideally we would have had laptops all with USB-C charging and video (but budget didn't stretch that far). But it would have been more ideal that staff could just plug in one thing and away to go...with wired network, smartboard, projector and charging all with a single plug. Its too early to say how sucessful this approach will be - and to be honest - my preference would have been to stick with fixed PCs becuase that practically guaranteed a working PC at the front of a classroom - but at the expense of loss of flexibility elsewhere. As the laptops are "locked" down - we can use a VPN to ensure staff get the same "experience" everywhere - provided they can connect to wireless or tether from a 4G connection.

I'd be wanting a fully functional USB-C socket too (for convenient charging without a custom PSU and onbe that supports video out). And I assume SSDs...

That sort of comment always makes me smile. Its a fine enterprise solution. Yes, Like Lidl and Aldi its a market disrupter with a different marking philosophy. There is nothing wrong with the food they sell - although it may come in different packaging. And there is nothing wrong with Unify either. I bought new tyres the other day. Was offered "budget" tyres, Mid range and Premium. I then asked for the A/B/C rating for breaking distance, wear, etc (much to the surprise of the seller). The budget tyres came out on top in every category....for almost half the money. Some always insist in shopping at Waitrose...and some always insist on Cisco/Meraki products. Not because they are better. - but simply because they feel comfortable with the name on the box.

...kind of depends which generation i5 these laptops are - there is a world of difference between the latest generation of if i5 and the original ones - which now seem dog slow. Also you might want to factor in the cost or replacement batteries.

Unless old fibre runs are broken - I can't see why your would replace them. Typically - they will work just fine with a 10G (presumably multimode if they are that old) module in the switch. We did replace some of our mechanical termination joints with pigtails (got a contractor in to do a number in one go). And while using a 50u patch with 64u cable does introduce some loss - our connections worked fine. No errors reported in 10G data on the switch. Only if you are working at the limits of what fibre can do and are getting transmission errors would I think about replacing the fibre.