presentation that I am preparing for our Head of School.
Daiva
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Renee Ramig <rramig@sevenhillsschool.org>wrote:
> We use Cymphonix. EVERY device on my network that accesses the internet
> 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
>
> --
> Daiva Navickas
> Instructional Technology South Area Solomon Schechter Day School
> 1 Commerce Way
> Norwood, MA 02062
> 781-769-5555
>
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--
Daiva Navickas
Instructional Technology South Area Solomon Schechter Day School
1 Commerce Way
Norwood, MA 02062
781-769-5555
[ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874 ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
