Category: Service

Oct 07 2021

Websites that use websockets – Chromebooks

When using Chromebooks, you may experience issues accessing websites that use websockets. In these instances, the browser on the Chromebook attempts to go out to the internet using the SOCKS protocol entry from the proxy settings.

Normally sessions go out to the internet using the top 3 protocols (HTTP and HTTPS especially). Other devices (Windows etc) have the SOCKS protocol blank so it will send the session to the internet via HTTP/HTTPS instead. On Chromebooks if you’ve set a proxy (wf1.thegrid.org.uk etc) via G-Suite it ticks it for all protocols (including SOCKS). However, RM do not support the SOCKS protocol and this makes the outbound connection fail.

There are some high profile websites that use websockets such as SCOMIS, Spotify, and LiveStorm. It may also cause issues when using the remote desktop web client into a LARA server.

There are a couple of fixes!

Option 1) remove the entry from the SOCKS protocol, and leave it blank.
Option 2) schools connect the Chromebooks to a transparent proxy network (typically a 10.* range), instead of the proxied network (172.* range)

If you have any queries, please get in touch with our Service Desk. Thanks

May 26 2021

May Half Term – a good time for some housekeeping?

With Half Term on the horizon, it might be a good idea to review the firewall access that you have in place. Are there legacy firewall rules that can be removed? Of course if firewall rules are no longer needed, the access should be disabled. I would encourage you to pay particular attention to inbound access. Have you previously deployed access to an internally hosted server that has since been decommissioned? Or have you provided access for a company to connect into the school network and you no longer work with them? It is the school’s responsibility to let us know if access is no longer required, otherwise it will remain in place.

To find out what is in place at your school, please get in touch with our Broadband Service Desk. We would recommend you viewing this information in SafetyNet and we will be happy to talk you through the information  that you are looking at.

Thanks,

Kev

Oct 28 2020

HfL Broadband

I am sure many of you are aware that HfL Broadband has replaced our previous HICS service. I have been intending to update you on the renewal numbers for a while now – but the last few months have been very busy. No doubt the vast majority of you are also feeling the pressure in these unprecedented times!

Up to September 30th 2020, 508 schools were contracted to receive their broadband provision through HfL. We are pleased to say that only 49 of these schools did not renew through us. It’s an extremely competitive market and we are delighted with the renewals numbers. We also had two schools who left us three years ago, decide to re-join.

There were lots of different reasons these schools left our provision: schools closing, infants and junior schools merging and only needed the one connection, schools joining out of county provisions and of course others just wishing to contract elsewhere. We wish all of these schools the best in their new scenarios.

There are 150 schools that are increasing their internet speed either by installing a different type of internet circuit or by increasing their bandwidth on their existing infrastructure. As I am sure that you can imagine there are currently lots of challenges associated to the work that is required and we will be working closely with RM to make sure that this is as problem free as possible.

We would like to extend our thanks to RM, and of course to all schools and I.T. support companies who have worked with us, particularly in the challenging circumstances due to the pandemic. We value your custom and look forward to working closely with you during the new three year contract. If you have questions or need advice, please contact us on either help@sd.hertsforlearning.co.uk or by phoning 01438 844777.

Stay safe!

Kevin Crawley

Mar 26 2020

SSL Connect (VPN) Service Improvements

Following on from our communication yesterday, we have been in discussions with RM to identify how we can jointly support you as effectively as possible for the use of VPN

Within the next 24 hours the following changes will take place:

·         All schools will each be upgraded from 10 concurrent sessions to 50

·         The HICS network was previously capped at 500 concurrent connections.  Burst capacity will be enabled for up to 2500 connections

·         The duration of user connections timing out when they are inactive has been reduced to 10 minutes.  This will reduce the amount of connections which are left dormant, making them available for others to use.

We hope this will drastically improve the effectiveness of the service during this difficult period of time and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.

Mar 25 2020

SSL Connect Update

We reported yesterday that some of our customers have been experiencing difficulties when using SSL Connect Remote Working (VPN). The network is under an immense amount of strain at the moment due to the large volumes of people working from home. In order to ensure this remains as accessible as possible to all, please follow the guidance below:

–          Only log into SSL Connect when needing to access school-hosted resources (e.g. SIMs servers) and log off immediately after using them.  Accessing cloud-based resources (e.g. Microsoft Office 365 and Google G-suite won’t need a VPN connection)

–          Ensure that you proactively log out of SSL Connect when you do not need remote access to ensure that your session terminates immediately without leaving it to time-out

–          If your school is likely to have more than 10 concurrent users at any one time, please let us know via the Service Desk, so that we can do all we can to ensure the correct resources are allocated to you

Mar 24 2020

SSL Connect – Service Issue

Customers using SSL Connect may face a “session could not be established” error page. This is due to unprecedented demand causing connection issues for some customers. RM are actively working on this to get the matter resolved as quickly as possible.