exonetsystems

Hi, thanks for your help Mikey, will check out the MCS stuff when I can next! So here is what I have come up with so far: - I want to discount the laptop (350), because at home I can transfer a file at around 30MB/s over Wi-Fi. Looking online these cards are awful but it doesn't seem that this would be the case. - I want to discount interference, although I can't prove this scientifically, I can't pick up any other wireless network in the area, and we're in a brand new building with no electric device at this point in time (the staff and students haven't moved into the building yet). - I want to discount the wireless, because even though it's slow with my personal laptop (ProBook), it's still an awful lot better than the 350. - I want to discount the server, because wired file transfer are like lightning (or at least in line with what you would expect from a wired gigabit network). That leaves two things; the wireless controller, or the switches. I am this week going back to replace one of the switches with a little unmanaged gigabit PoE switch and plug everything relevant in there. These HP switches are a little out of my depth, and haven't been configured aside from a static IP (the configuration may well be the problem, but I wouldn't know what I'm looking for). The struggles goes on!

Thanks for that, they both look pretty acceptable to me - would these sorts of speeds be what I'm aiming for? Chipsets: ProBook 430 G1: Mediatek MT7630E 350 G2: Realtek RTL8723BE We actually haven't tried multiple 350s due to them being locked away as it's half term. On Monday I will for sure! I completely agree that they aren't really a match, but I suppose at least it's discounting the Wi-Fi itself. As a test we had there today a Ubiquiti UniFi Pro and a Cisco WAP321, both requiring minimal configuration, both showing exactly the same speeds. It has to be the laptop! While I don't discredit him, as mentioned above a colleague took it home last night to try and it manages to pull 70 down from his fibre connection at home on wireless. I just feel like I'm going around in circles and banging my head against a wall!

Ah, ok thanks for that! And you mate, thanks again!

To provide an update, I swapped the wireless card on my ProBook with the card on the 350. The 350 with the ProBook card in does seem to make the internet better (although still can't push/pull a solid 20mb connection). Obviously the ProBook with its original card in is solid as mentioned previously. Just trying absolutely anything at the mo!

You would think so, but due to the politics of the build, the school aren't actually the client here - the government is. This project is already millions of pounds over and money is saved wherever possible. They had a chap come in to specifically configure the Wi-Fi on Monday, but he was here no more than hour and the only test was to bring up a webpage. A colleague of mine has gotten in touch but was met with a rude response of "it works" and won't come back to the site. Well yes, but not correctly. Psh!

Nothing that fancy I'm afraid!

Attached is the reults from iperf. The top set of results are using the 350 directly plugged into the LAN, and the second set below is the results using the MSM460 AP with MSM760 controller. It's almost as if it's being throttled by the AP somehow, or maybe the wireless on this laptop really is that bad!

Okay, so here are my finding now I'm back on site and have brought my UniFi Pro access point from home. Hope you can see the images! Just realised you can't see the speed:- with HP Wi-Fi the download speed was around 7Mbps, Lan 20Mbps, and UniFi around 9Mbps. Weird!

I didn't delve into this too deeply, but both devices were connecting at 150mbps. The 350's don't support 5ghz, so I thought we may as well turn it off on the WAP's/controller, but it didn't seem to make any difference. Again, it wasn't a 'controlled' test - we simply picked a classroom and set up some devices. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most technical person when it comes to enterprise wi-fi (I prefer things like prosumer Ubiquiti UniFi etc.). A colleague of mine has an Android tablet with this app the scans Wi-Fi channels and such like, might be a starting point, although we have just tried using the single AP with no other AP's in range from nearly homes/other WAP's, so unfortunately it doesn't necessarily sound like an interference issue. After today the internet is being cut off for the best part of 5 or 6 weeks to move the connection to a temporary location where the school will be based whilst the build is being finished, so will absolutely need to look at something like iperf. Will play with it today, thanks! Help much appreciated so far!

Thanks for your help guys thus far. Unfortunately, I updated the firmware on the WLAN controller and WAP's as soon as they got installed. In hindsight I wished I had tried it on the older firmware. Doh! The 350 already has its latest drivers (as you tell I'm a bit fussy about keeping everything up to date). My moto is not 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', but rather 'If there's a newer version, it must be better'. So I took the 350 home with me last night to try there. At home I have a 50mb Virgin Media connection with a Ubiquiti UniFi Pro showering my house in Wi-Fi. It's almost the same - my iPhone, ProBook, iPad all pull down the max 50mb, but the 350 can only get down 30mb. While this is a problem that it can't do that, that 30mb is still more than what the school gets, but at school at 350 can only pull down around 5mb or so of 20mb! The plot thickens... - - - Updated - - - Thanks, I already covered this

Okay so I work at a brand new school (new build and refurb of the old). As part of the project the whole IT infrastructure has been replaced with something a little 21st century. As part of this a whole host of HP switches have been installed (which I do love) and a HP wireless system (which I'm not a fan of yet). All installed by the communication and data contractor, I had no say in what was purchased or installed. Basically we have a HP MSM760 controller with 17 HP MSM460 AP's. The issue comes with the throughput of the WAP's, or rather than the combination of which device is connected to it. On my own HP ProBook 430 G1 the internet speed is solid as a rock on speediest.net, 20 up/20 down with a decent ping and a perfectly flat good connection bar on the speed test. Using the schools laptops (HP 350 G2), I can never seem to get a connection above 7 up/7 down or so with a terrible ping and a jagged connection bar. Obviously if my personal laptop works perfectly, it can't be the WAP, right? Except even moving files over the wireless is only around 10MB/s. And the school has around 80 of the HP 350's, so I don't want to just say "it's the client device", even though they're not the best machines in the world. Heck, they even work perfectly on my 50mb Virgin Media connection at home! Of course, all of the wired network infrastructure in the school works brilliantly as it should. Does anyone have any ideas on what could be the cause of this? Thanks in advance!

My bad on this one, seems like a reboot of the machine made the new wpad.dat spring into life. Thanks again!

Just realised you set that up what I needed above. Do you have any ideas why local IP addresses (switches, wlan management etc) don't open with the wpad.dat in place? Thanks again, Brendan

Absolute star, thanks mate! Hopefully this will sort the issues we're having! Sorry to be a pain, but one more thing - if I try a local IP address and not hostname, it tries the proxy and doesn't get there opening the page. Not a massive issue as we can just set one machine up manually with the proxy to bypass the 10.130.113.0 range, but helpful nonetheless if I could overcome that. Thanks again for all your help, only my first try with wpad.dat and pac files. Brendan

Grant, you're my hero! Basically our local network is 10.130.113.0, subnet 255.255.255.0. Anything inside the local network should use the proxy server 'sslfilter.proxy.swgfl.org.uk:8080' unless they're trying to access another local 10.130.113.0 IP address, in which case it should use no proxy. When they take devices home (so they'll be on any other network with any other IP range) they should not use the proxy. Hope this helps, I really owe you one!

C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\pacparser-1.2.7-win32\pacparser-1.2.7-win32>pac tester.exe -p wpad.dat -u http://10.130.113.253 -c 10.130.113.1 PROXY sslfilter.proxy.swgfl.org.uk:8080 Even weirdererer!

Okay, so here's a weird one then. My machine is on the 10.130.113.0 range (.1 to be exact), and when I run the pacparser I just can't get it to use the proxy unless I use the -c switch and set it manually. It just wants to go DIRECT. What could be the cause of this, if you don't mind me asking? Cheers.

Hi all, hope everyone is looking forward to the half term break...like we ever get one! In a few weeks time, we're starting our Windows 10 mass deployment of around 100 machines. Managed to get around the majority of GPO's with Server 2012 R2, but am really struggling with the Start Menu layout. Does anyone know of a way I can have the live tiles not only turned off, but removed altogether on the Start Menu bit, and also to take the options and icons out of the Apps list on the Start Menu? Driving me insane! Thanks in advance!

Interesting! Is that with the SWGfL? I have signed up to text alerts from RM (something I deeply regret doing as I get bombarded) informing me whenever they're having issues, and every other day it's something to do with the transparent proxy!

Soft Egg?

Thanks for your suggestion! We have the transparent proxy, but it appears to make browsing so much slower and less reliable. So unfortunately it's a bit of a bum steer - - - Updated - - - Star! Thank you very much sir!

Thanks for your help, but unfortunately I can't seem to get my head around pactester or pacparser!

Hi all, would someone in the know mind just going over my very simple Proxy PAC file please to make sure I'm doing this correctly before deployment? Basically our network is 10.130.113.0, and I want it to use the proxy settings if the local machine has a school IP address - and if it doesn't then don't use the proxy settings (this part is for when they take laptops home). An exception to this rule is to not apply proxy settings to any local address on the network. function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { if (isInNet(myIpAddress(), "10.130.113.0", "255.255.255.0") return "PROXY sslfilter.proxy.swgfl.org.uk:8080"; else return "DIRECT"; if (isInNet(host, "10.130.113.0", "255.255.255.0")) return "DIRECT"; } Many thanks in advance, and have a good weekend all!

Thank you all for your help and replies, glad I got that one cleared up!

Thanks for the reassurance! I think I'm going to give the PAC and WPAD deployment a go first - seems like it may simpler! But I will report back if that doesn't work and I manage to do anything with Squid in my spare time (ha)! Thanks for your help!