falls into the default group which I set up as the student group (most
conservative filtering). Since I don't use AD on the 15% of the Macs we
have, when they get on the network, they are in the default group.
You can create as many groups as you want and move people by IP, by Mac
address, by AD name / group, etc. Each group (or even individual) can
have their own settings which can be as liberal as fully bypassing the
filter or as strict as blocking all access to the internet.
The only issue I had was the board members use our guest wireless
account for their personal computers which means they fall in the
default group. Now, I actually have very limited filtering on even in
this student group, but I do block Facebook because I have been asked by
the head to do this. So, a couple board members wanted access to
Facebook. I said they are welcome to use a school laptop. I created a
board login they use on the school laptop which is in a group that has
Facebook access.
I actually purchased Cymphonix for doing bandwidth management rather
than filtering. I have always been anti-filtering. However, since the
box came with filtering in it, I turned it on. It has been surprisingly
easy to manage. It has been on the default settings since day 1 for the
default filtering group. I have had to add less than 20 websites (about
15 blacklisted and 5 whitelisted) to the default group in over a year.
I also have an admin group, a board group and a couple other random
groups which took only a few minutes to set up. I am emailed about once
a month with a site that someone requests is unblocked. (If someone
gets a blocked site, they just click a single link. And just click
send. This sends an email to me with the site, the reason why blocked,
and the user requesting it unblocked.)
Also because bandwidth management is what I am focusing on, I can go in
and manually block sites or actions (like peer to peer) that I know
takes a lot of bandwidth. For example, lots of my employees have bought
Apple products and it was killing the bandwidth. I went in and set it
for a max of 10% of the bandwidth at any one time can be from Apple.com.
It took me 5 minutes to do this, and there was a noticeable increase in
speed within minutes of changing this setting.
There tech support is also outstanding. The few times I had to call,
they stayed on the phone with me until my issue was resolved. They are
also great at answering "I just don't know what I am doing" questions.
Renee
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Daiva Navickas
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 8:42 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: ISED filtering for elementary school
Hello to all,
Our K-8 school is currently using an appliance, 3-COM, for filtering
purposes. The down side is that the filtering is based on MAC addresses,
with no ability to filter by group.
We are looking into better options- Barracuda appliance seems to be a
worthwhile option.
Does anyone have any experience with Barracuda? We are using Active
directory and terminal services.
Any other recommendations?
Thanks,
Daiva
--=20
Daiva Navickas
Instructional Technology South Area Solomon Schechter Day School
1 Commerce Way
Norwood, MA 02062
781-769-5555
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