BYOD - from the beginning

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Matt Strickland

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Nov 17, 2016, 4:04:00 PM11/17/16
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Hi all,

We are a school that's stepped back from BYOD just to see how things mature, but the pressure is on and I am asking for some 'heads up' technical or non-technical to look for.

A few of many questions I have: 
  • charging facilities/power availability in classrooms
  • wireless accessibility/bandwidth, security (we are ruckus, ~1AP every second classroom, 802.1x auth for byod but private CA/untrusted cert)
  • backup responsibilities, teacher moderation & evidence, students transferring schools (moving / archiving online data)
  • level of support, helpdesk responsibilities
We are currently O365 only but other schools have setup dual O365/GAFE - is there segregation between staff/students/classes or mostly cohesive?

Sorry its a broad post - but if there's anything that would have made life easier I'd like to know.

Matt

Alistair Baird

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Nov 17, 2016, 4:35:06 PM11/17/16
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From a sort of technical viewpoint, we find that students who bring their laptops like to try and plug in to the wired network (cos everything works on that) but I'm about to introduce port MAC filtering to stop that. Apart from the obvious security issues that causes, they never plug the workstations back in. The student Wifi is fire-walled and only allows port 80 and 443, that stops a lot of apps working which is fine, except the apps slow their devices down as they see an internet connection but can't connect on unauthorised ports. It also stops new apps from downloading from the various app stores

Also, teachers have found that while everyone can connect their phone, and they all want to, that the screen size on a phone is not practical to do anything, so we are trying to change to a BTD (bring This device) with a recommendation of a 10" screen minimum, preferably separate keyboard, and encouraging iPads/chromebooks/laptops/dedicated tablets. Teachers really need to look at what it is they are expecting students to use their devices for, then that will dictate other things. Power points was an issue for charging, but we have fortunately just upgraded our classrooms and I'm looking at putting a hanging power cord/multi outlet in some classes as I spec'ed ceiling power points in all the classrooms. We have power points in breakout spaces as well, but with the BTD we are saying the device should handle a day's charge, as we are not responsible for lost chargers etc. Also insurance is not our responsibility. I seem to get asked to track phones every second day, and only go so far as to tell them the last AP it was connected to, then hand over to our resident policeman to follow up (a Dean who was a policeman in his former life). A few have turned up in rubbish bins, but most others miraculously appear again.

Devices are only for cloud use, so GAFE for us. Any other stuff is their responsibility to put on memory stick (Art students for instance). Printing is a no no, they can email it to thenselves and log onto a school workstation to print.

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Garth Johnson

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Nov 17, 2016, 5:48:55 PM11/17/16
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We moved to BYOD in 2012. The first year we specified and organised a bulk purchase of Android Tablets, which came back to bite us badly, as the Tablets had a huge failure rate. 

In subsequent years we have opened up the options - with conditions (10" screen minimum, keyboard, 8 hour battery life, wifi). We found we had to up the number of AP's around the school, and basically have one AP per room running low power now.

We put the expectation on students to come to school with a fully charged device. We do have odd chargers around to suit most devices, with the exception of those pesky Macs.:) 

We use GAFE, and have Google Cloud print available to mono printers only. Colour prints have to be done by logging into a shared workstation in the eLearning area.

Content filtering is done using Linewize, mapping the MAC address of devices. Students are only allowed to have 2 devices connected, as we found lots of phones, iPods etc attached and burning up bandwidth with a corresponding drop in connectivity speed etc.

One of the major cons we have found is for teachers trying to run a specific App for a specific device, to cater for the majority of what the class has. An example is one of our Y6 classes have about 90% iPads. The teacher finds a cool App to help with study units, but then has to find alternatives for the 10%.

This year, in Y4 & Y5, we replaced the small class clusters of laptops, and the 2 trolleys of laptops with a 1 to 1 school supplied chromebook. Each student is allocated a chromebook, which then becomes their "personal" device. We have found some remarkable advantages:
1) Almost zero User Induced Damage
2) Greater lesson productivity time (no slow laptop boot loading a roaming profile over wifi)
3) Teachers can find and use common Apps across all students
4) With new full class sized charging trolleys (lockable), all devices are plugged in at night, so no discharged devices the next day
5) A definite and immediate cost saving in hardware. We were able to fit out 5 classes for 60% of the cost of replacing like for like at the end of the lease (without the 1:1 benefit)

Trends I have noticed:

1) First year of boys using BYOD (Y6), there tends to be an iPad rush, as they are flash and fun
2) iPads do have limitations when using GAFE, with the Apps not always delivering the full benefits of a chromebook direct access (Docs, Sheets etc)
3) In Y7 and Y8, boys start getting the device they need when they move on to college, and iPads are ditched
4) Often times, in Y7 & Y8, I see a task set for boys, and there is a rush for the chromebook trolley to grab a chromebook in preference to the flash Macbooks and Win10 laptops/Surfaces that are in abundance as their own devices

Just my 2cents worth..

Cheers

Garth

ictdi...@kowhai.school.nz

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Nov 20, 2016, 4:19:47 PM11/20/16
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Our school provided GAFE + school chromebooks was so successful that we had a grass roots demand from teachers to get a 1:1 device ratio as soon as possible. While the school had brought 300 chromebooks (roll is just over 500) we couldn't afford to buy enough for 1:1 or even continue replacing / upgrading our existing stock. Hence we are introducing BYOD in 2017 - (lots of discussions around could be include a chromebook as part of their fees / issues of equity etc etc). Basically we are putting a chromebook on the stationery list for our incoming year 7s (I'm sure some year 8's will also get them). The only significant discount we could get was if the school bulk purchased chromebooks and then on-sold them to parents - this would see us carrying the financial risk, there would be a lot of administration time in organising it (everyone is already flat tack) and in selling to us as a company not a regular consumer the supplying is freed from the consumer guarantees act! We have arranged for a local store to be our nominated supplier - slight discount for parents.
So we are recommending BTD (thanks Alistair - I'll be using this!) as a chromebook: with our recommendation being either the Acer c730e (4GB RAM) or Acer c738T Flip (I've been trialling this for a week and its fantastic - touch screen, flip screen so it can be used in tent / tablet mode as well - plus it can also run Android apps (this capability will also be rolled out to lower end models in the future).

Similar to Garth we have trialled BYOD for a couple of years but the students love using the chromebooks and will opt for them over their own flash ipads, laptops etc. 
Students will have to take their device home each night - we will provide no special storage during the day. They will be kept in desks/tote trays during the day when not in use. The class will be locked when students are out of class. Apart from one break in we have not had any school devices stolen.
We are not providing charging facilities - to messy and a potential safety risk. They need to be fully charged when they arrive at school.
We will have an open BYOD SSID operational during school hours that will be set to only accept logins against our school domain name.
Lite touch support - provided they can get onto the wifi and internet any other issues are their responsibility (basically take it back to the shop you got it from).
Wifi access points - we have 1 ap between 2 classes at the moment as per SNUP. I have warned the BOT that we may need to infill with extra APs to meet the demand - we will wait and see how it looks when it rolls out.

Feel free to give me a call 09 846 7534 xt 222 if you want to have a chat.
Cheers
Tom






On Friday, 18 November 2016 10:04:00 UTC+13, Matt Strickland wrote:

Matt Strickland

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Nov 21, 2016, 2:02:54 AM11/21/16
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Thanks for your comments they are much appreciated.

Myself and our DP plan to visit a local school in Napier, and also another school in Wellington for a comparison.

I am also purchasing devices for a class of year 9's to use throughout the year. They will be Acer travelmate based with SSD as we have used these in trolleys and have found them reasonably tough, no mouse buttons (embedded in trackpad), strong hinges, and a keyboard that the keys dont 'fall off'.

I am thinking tho that while they will be domain connected to take advantaged of licenced software (as they are school owned) I may make them a local administrator, to mimic BYOD. Sure they can disconnect from the domain, uninstall required software but I think this could be a good test. I am not expecting too much damage but its the unknown unless someone on here has tried with school owned devices. BYOD is still our long term but this will test the water.

I think we will end up with something like 75-85% BYOD with the rest school supplied, with additional specialist hardware. The school will be the service provider, provide internet, provide some software (eg Adobe CC) and help to an extent.

Matt

Craig Knights

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Nov 21, 2016, 2:36:17 AM11/21/16
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School owned devices issued to students was a demolition derby for us.  Boys. Decile 10 boys. The state of their now byod macbooks is often unbelievably bad..  byod ipads much the same..  i saw one the other day that was unbroken but bent!  Maybe 4mm deflection!  Amazing....

Craig

Craig

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ictdi...@kowhai.school.nz

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Nov 21, 2016, 3:21:50 AM11/21/16
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No worries Matt. The beauty of school owned chromebooks was the optional chrome management console which meant it was very easy to lock them down, any changes to the settings could be applied to all 300 chromebooks almost simultaneously - they were basically unbreakable (apart from a few intrepid kids who figured out how to factory reset them!).

For stand alone systems either you or your IT contractor could build you a windows rapid deployment image of your acer build. If the kids muck anything up, change settings, get a virus etc you simply plug it into the network, press F12 on boot, choose boot from network and then select the your image from the PXE server. We have just set this up for TELA laptops using our own image and it can reimage the hard drive in 10 mins unattended and then it about another 10 minutes or so minutes finalising the settings. I used to have our own images using acronis / aomei imaging software but this is much quicker and easier. I had also played around with software that rolled the computer back to its saved state on each boot (deep freeze) but this had issues in allowing programs like chrome to self update.


On Friday, 18 November 2016 10:04:00 UTC+13, Matt Strickland wrote:

Matt Strickland

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Nov 21, 2016, 2:05:21 PM11/21/16
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Thanks Tom,

Yes I already use MDT/SCCM tools and deploy our own images, for most problematic machines usually they are re-deployed after saving the user state (an advantage with chromebooks being most stuff is synced in the cloud), however since we are not in the google ecosystem it makes chromebooks harder to fit, especially when we want to deploy licencing for adobe products to seniors that then leaves us with Mac/PC only.

However at some point I think we will integrate Google Apps with Azure so at least users have the same credentials for O365 or G Suite (GAFE), which means a mix of chromebooks for some subject areas, and traditional PC/Mac for others.

5 Years time we will probably have many more BYOD and we will probably be creating services to fit whichever device that shows up, but for particular subjects the BTD 'Bring This Device' will probably apply.

Matt

Garth Johnson

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Nov 21, 2016, 4:08:52 PM11/21/16
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Hey Craig

Interestingly, we found the opposite for our Year 4&5 boys that had 1:1 school owned chromebooks issued this year. Only 1 User induced damage incident where he shut the lid on his headphones.

However, I have noted that our Year 7&8 boys are a different matter - I see some horrific things done to BYOD devices (expensive MacBook Airs included) that I just shake my head at.. we are a private school, but would be on the Decile 10 scale of things. Sometimes money seems to be no issue, and if a BYOD device is trashed, the attitude is "Oh, parents will just buy me another".. sometimes I think we are educating the wrong people..

Cheers

Garth

Craig Knights

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Nov 21, 2016, 4:24:24 PM11/21/16
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we started on this a few years ago now...  we initially started with ASUS eeePC's leased from Equico and re-leased to parents by us..  "oh if I break it, I get another"  a lot of it was very very deliberate, throw and catch as high as you can..  see who can pass it through their legs the fastest...

so we changed to BYOD, most brought MacBook Pro's along..   a large proportion had the idea that their parents would just get them another..  and most of those discovered that they were incorrect in their beliefs...  this was just careless damage...  although as the devices get older, they try to wreck them a little quicker to get a replacement..

we see a fair bit of oh the school's got plenty of money, it doesn't matter, and oh Mum and Dad have plenty of money, it doesn't matter.  It's not as bad as it used to be however...

they think they're private school boys...  but they're not.  State integrated, and one of the cheaper ones nationally!

ta
Craig




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Kevin Whelan

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Nov 21, 2016, 4:35:39 PM11/21/16
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I am thinking tho that while they will be domain connected to take advantaged of licenced software (as they are school owned) I may make them a local administrator, to mimic BYOD. Sure they can disconnect from the domain, uninstall required software but I think this could be a good test. I am not expecting too much damage but its the unknown unless someone on here has tried with school owned devices. BYOD is still our long term but this will test the water.


I don't understand this thinking at all ,if you want to provide school owned laptops then domain joined makes complete sense ,just like desktops but they are not BYOD and should never have user admin rights. Why would they even need that access.?
the golden rule of BYOD is that the machines are completely isolated from the network, vlanned with internet access only, some schools will allow print but most not,file access can be done through webdav but with cloud it's not really needed.

You seem to be talking about two different things with teacher moderation and students transferring, not sure what that has to do with BYOD,
personally I think you are just asking for virus and hacking hell and making yourself vulnerable if allowing students to have a domain joined machine with admin rights

the 75% theory sounds about right, you will need to keep domain machines for software like adobe that students can't afford and your questions about charging and repairs are valid

We have the rule that I don't touch student machines at all even tho I get 20 odd requests a day.
I cant possibly fix them all 500+ and can't make exceptions for just some so very strict on that and just say sorry can't help.
also don't want to get involved with parents blaming me or having issues with their warranty because the school technician played with their machine
Complete minefield there

Matt Strickland

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Nov 22, 2016, 10:03:23 PM11/22/16
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On Tuesday, 22 November 2016 10:35:39 UTC+13, Kevin Whelan wrote:

I don't understand this thinking at all ,if you want to provide school owned laptops then domain joined makes complete sense ,just like desktops but they are not BYOD and should never have user admin rights. Why would they even need that access.?
the golden rule of BYOD is that the machines are completely isolated from the network, vlanned with internet access only, some schools will allow print but most not,file access can be done through webdav but with cloud it's not really needed.

You seem to be talking about two different things with teacher moderation and students transferring, not sure what that has to do with BYOD,
personally I think you are just asking for virus and hacking hell and making yourself vulnerable if allowing students to have a domain joined machine with admin rights

It's more because I don't have control of what applications are going to be used for this trial, and it could be store based apps, non deployable/msi, they may need to add software at home, etc, so I have a few options:
  • Domain connected, still vlan'd similar to byod but with some rules to allow domain auth and access to licence servers. Sure a virus / ransom-ware or the user could destroy the client, makes no difference to the network as it will still encrypt all files on the network that the user normally has access to, regardless if they are an admin or not. At this point, its exactly the same as a student on their own laptop removing a network cable from a desktop machine and plugging in as I'm not mac filtering or vlanning ethernet yet. (ethernet is actually worse as it allows everything on native vlan 1)
  • Non-domain connected but still an admin, boyd network but unable to use school hosted software (unless vlan also modified) but also unable to install apps that only run in admin mode (or at least require admin to install)
So if the student is a local admin (and by that I mean the local machine they use), and not a domain admin (a standard user) and they are still vlan'd mostly to byod rules, it shouldn't make any difference? 

Matt

J B

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Nov 22, 2016, 10:36:29 PM11/22/16
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As local admin it is far easier to privilage escalate, make sure you never log on with higher domain credentials as these are cached and can be rainbow tabled out comparatively easily by the user.  Don't use a standard local admin password across devices either.

 

Depends on your users but some of these tools are quite easy to use.  They can also get access to static wpa wireless keys if they are still a thing there and you want them kept secret.

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Matt Strickland

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Nov 22, 2016, 10:53:06 PM11/22/16
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Makes total sense.

Only the original deployment user has logged in which also is a limited account (can read deployment share but no write access), we dont use wpa but I have deployed a loading/fallback wpa to other domain laptops, but not these. (Just in case radius/CA incompletely falls over so I can redeploy a new config), I've never enabled this wpa yet, but I consider it a known paraphrase, so ssid is off and only enabled isolated to whats required.

I can understand where you are coming from in gaining domain credentials, and this also applies to school devices stolen by students, without bitlocker or drive encryption of some type.

Thanks

Matt
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gre...@staff.cbhs.school.nz

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Nov 23, 2016, 12:35:58 AM11/23/16
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My immediate reaction was {student knows local admin credentials} and {domain joined} on the same box? You must be mad.

But thinking further, as it's generally easy to get local admin access on a Windows box you have physical access to, then it's arguably no worse than having them domain-joined with no admin user (*).

My suggestions for such school-provided devices would be:
1. Provide an additional local admin account for elevated access; don't make their student user account a local admin.
2. Focus on making accidental breaches (e.g. user ran malware) trash only that student's data.
3. Don't log in to the device as a domain user that you care about (e.g. your own account or a domain admin). This includes any domain accounts that might be used for management/software deployment.
4. Assuming students have domain accounts, advise them that you're not responsible for student A or B or their files if student A logs into the computer issued to student B. You could consider setting local login rights per machine.
5. Have another local admin account on the machine for any service matters that don't warrant a reinstall.

(*) This is assuming that the user (or other party with access to the device) is intentionally attempting to gain access. If we're only considering unintentional malicious activity, then I claim there's still a strong argument for not providing admin credentials.

For byod-equivalent devices provided by my school, we don't domain join and do give local admin credentials.

- Ben.

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at 4:03:23 PM UTC+13, Matt Strickland wrote:
[snip]

Matt Strickland

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Nov 23, 2016, 3:36:06 PM11/23/16
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Cheers Ben,

For byod-equivalent devices provided by my school, we don't domain join and do give local admin credentials.

Likely the way it will happen because as more services are hosted and less on the domain, connecting to the domain will gain no advantage.

Are these byod equivalent devices also taken home by students, ie are they issued to them permanently?

Matt

gre...@staff.cbhs.school.nz

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Nov 24, 2016, 1:04:01 AM11/24/16
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Likely the way it will happen because as more services are hosted and less on the domain, connecting to the domain will gain no advantage.

Our theory was that there was no particular benefit in making them 'better' (management/installed software -wise) than actual BYOD devices.
i.e. If a teacher has a class with 20 student-owned and 10 school-owned devices, it doesn't help the course delivery much if 1/3 of the students can access a particular bit of software. Likewise you're going to need IT support systems to suit the 2/3 anyway, so may as well do the same for the 1/3.

You may have particular subject areas where it makes sense for the school to provide 100% of the equipment+software. For us that's graphics/design/technology/music. The likelihood is that we'll be providing desktops for these areas long after BYOD takes over other areas; we expect to phase out computer labs as the machines reach EOL, but plan for continued renewal purchasing for specialist areas.

Are these byod equivalent devices also taken home by students, ie are they issued to them permanently?

Currently we're only dealing with loaners for those whose devices are away being repaired; for these we demand that they are returned each day (we don't supply the AC adapter). They're issued to specific students i.e. they receive the same unit back the next day; we only reinstall once they're done.

Future byod-equiv devices may well be take home; we've had a few special cases and yes they get issued permanently.

- Ben.

Matt Strickland

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Nov 26, 2016, 9:45:10 PM11/26/16
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Just a general consensus, is aiming for 1AP per classroom the ideal? Then look at reduced power options on 2.4G and channel separation on 5G?
Since its a staged migration, should I suggest 'BYOD ready' classrooms, vs an entire school rollout where this is initially only 20% uptake?

Expect to change AP's around the 5 year mark? 7 years for less dense areas (or until firmware limitations possibly)?

Matt

J B

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Nov 27, 2016, 1:21:52 AM11/27/16
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We reorganize each time we get more waps for best coverage with one per byod class and the best we can do for the coverage in other areas, just got an influx of waps though so almost one per classroom. Plus hall, staffroom, library etc.

 

From: Matt Strickland
Sent: Sunday, 27 November 2016 3:45 PM
To: Techies for schools
Subject: [techies-for-schools] Re: BYOD - from the beginning

 

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Sue Way

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Nov 28, 2016, 5:18:44 PM11/28/16
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HI Matt,

We provision one AP per Clasroom.

We have 1400+ Students but often have 1800+ devices simultaneously connected to our wireless network. This number climbs every year as students bring more of their own devices. Some students even have 3 devices. The last 3 years we have encouraged BYOD for students, we have no particular device. They purchase their own device we do not provision it.

We have found that 1 AP per classroom works best in our environment which is a multi-storied multi-block campus. Some of our buildings are pretty solid so there isn't much wireless signal leakage between classrooms. 

We have just put in new APs capable of 802.11ac a good 3rd of the devices connecting are compatible. 



Sue Way | IT Services Director

Wellington Girls' College Pipitea Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 | 

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Julian Davison

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Nov 28, 2016, 5:25:28 PM11/28/16
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We have just put in new APs capable of 802.11ac a good 3rd of the devices connecting are compatible. 

Have many people got any stats on the proportion of devices that use the various standards?
I've been interested to see how different smart phones use different levels of connectivity (even within standards) and frequencies. Things like, if we deploy 802.11ac will it actually benefit (m)any devices? (I'm thinking of baseline-can-connect rather than the somewhat more black-magic required to demonstrate any throughput increase)

Or are most people not really worrying about it?



J,

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Andrew Godfrey

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Nov 28, 2016, 10:19:23 PM11/28/16
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Modern standards that quote high bandwidth also assume they can use wider channels which can then cause the same 2.4GHz interference problems that we are trying to avoid in dense AP environments. At BHS we limit any AP serving 2.4GHz (around 50% of our units) to 20MHz channels with reduced power on some of these and 5GHz radios are limited to 40MHz channels on all APs.

Some schools may be able to get away with 80MHz channels but only the smallest or sparsest of schools would be able to make use of the full 160MHz channels.

That being said, later model APs still have other advantages of earlier models and they will improve overall performance of a wireless network for both the newer and older devices.


 
Andrew Godfrey  |  Network Manager






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Kevin Whelan

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Nov 29, 2016, 3:10:22 PM11/29/16
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That's the advantage of Aerohive and probably Ruckus, dashboard stats for Africa, how many clients, by device type, by radio, what channels the client radios seem to prefer, what access points get the most use, what APs have most errors/retrys, who's using all the bandwidth, what applications use what bandwidth, what rates the clients are connected at
the options are staggering and it makes it so easy to tune your network, perhaps limit some applications by speed, alter radios to suit etc

I, like other here found alarming rates of connections with 2-3 devices per student but we believe the answer is not in just keep spending to keep up because you will never win that battle but to rethink how to focus the network for learning purposes. There is no educational argument for all those devices. we watched our BYOD traffic quadruple in 1.5 years with no sign of ever slowing down.

We were alarmed at our internet usage on the whole, although completely  free with N4L we don't believe it would really stand up under scrutiny as valid for its intended purpose and therefore if ignored by us was a bad attitude.

We are really only providing a learning tool with the advantage of being able to contact mum after sports practice or whatever. We do have a boarding house and that has totally different rules applied.

for example we now filter devices, phones and tablets (because we don't believe they are really viable BYOD device in a High school) to only connect at intervals and lunchtimes and after school
has cut our number of devices connected during class times by 2/3rds and people argue that sitting in a pocket they aren't using any network load but I don't buy that argument, they still chatter to the APs
teachers love it, students complained for a few days but accept it now
Facebook Spotify etc is only outside of class hours,
We also noticed a trend of students bringing every device to school to do their updates because of the 500 N4L connection was faster than home
That also had to stop
During class hours the Wifi is mean lean and fast now, at night when boarders all watching netflix its acceptable

there is no limiting factor to anyone learning on a proper BYOD device in any way here So we feel quite justified in our decisions and its certainly made the Wifi last longer and have lower operating costs

WHS Ict Technician

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Nov 29, 2016, 3:56:36 PM11/29/16
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 We went full BYOD before wsnup and N4L, so we went for one (cheap) AP per classroom and bought a meraki MX100 for client management (filtering, bandwidth management, tracking etc)

we had the same problems with students bringing too many devices, (while we were running post fire via a neighboring school's small N4L link) so banned phones on the network, and enforced by blocking their mac addresses at the MX100. With all clients limited to 1 mbps each with a burst capacity of 10 Mbps, browsing speeds are good on both the borrowed 50 N4L and our new 100. We run a caching server for apple updates.

the system worked very well. The upgrade to (unifi) ac was not so good, as we discovered that Apple ac is awful and caused constant issues with filemaker, so ended up staying at 2.4Ghz for staff. The dashboard for unifi is good.

The MX100 catches a lot of malware - the last couple of weeks have been quiet, but even so it has intercepted 300+ events.

Now we are being wsnupped, and have joined Toki Ponamu, so we are dropping back to N4L filtering and Ruckus client management. as we are obliged to turn over ict to Fusion.

As for the non-technical side, that's not my realm. I do teach a code club outside of school, and the students learn much more deeply and quickly when they share one device between 2 or 3 instead of having one each.



Patrick Dunford

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Nov 29, 2016, 5:29:10 PM11/29/16
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Haeata Community College a new school opening next year is putting in 802.11n wireless - not ac.

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flow in

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Nov 29, 2016, 5:36:24 PM11/29/16
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the seniors are gone atm, so the numbers are very low, but this is our mix from the few unifi we have in:
Inline images 1

Kent Champion

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Nov 29, 2016, 6:01:35 PM11/29/16
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Ditto seniors away so only junior snapshot of 2.4 / 5 and Radio Mode ratios.

 

 


 

Kent Champion
HelpDesk Analyst/Network Administrator
Kent.C...@waimea.school.nz

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Sue Way

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Nov 29, 2016, 8:12:28 PM11/29/16
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Some Stats from our Wireless.

We run an Aruba 7205 Controller with 85 APs, most are now 315, that support 802.11AC but still using some 135 which support 802.11n.

We have no seniors at the moment but these graphs are normal proportions of devices.

We don't stop students from connecting phones as many use them for getting their school email on. They also use them for taking photos and putting them in their google drive, saves us having cameras for them to use and it is very quick for them to take a photo and get it into their google drive for assignments etc.

We allow the students to chose what they use as BYOD but we do prefer something with a keyboard as phones are not suitable for writing or research but they are very useful for other things . Staff are great at finding web based stuff and apps that work on any OS so it doesn't matter what OS they have they can participate. IT provided specialist equipment for the heavy duty Design, 3D design, Art, Photography, Media and technology. We find Chromebooks great as when the water bottle eventually explodes or the screen is broken it is not too much for parent to replace.




Sue Way

Wellington Girls College



Matt Strickland

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Dec 4, 2016, 4:17:50 PM12/4/16
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Out of interest;
  • Any schools here running only Office 365?
  • Or any running G Suite + O365 (by that I mean not just enabling office software for students, actually using the tools in each platform)
Matt

Keith Craig

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Dec 4, 2016, 4:21:02 PM12/4/16
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We are doing a combo of O365 and G Suite. We moved school email to O365 a few years ago but then found more & more demand for Google Docs for student use. Now students primarily use Google & staff Microsoft.

Keith Craig
Systems Administrator
Dilworth School
Sent from my iPhone
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flow in

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Dec 4, 2016, 4:51:45 PM12/4/16
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yes, we run G Suite + O365.

G-suite is our default and required system, but some users need office. We automate all the account creation and licensing.

Sue Way

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Dec 5, 2016, 3:43:01 PM12/5/16
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HI Matt,

We use the G Suite for staff and students.

All school owned laptops and Desktops have the Microsoft office suite installed and these are used across the school by both students and staff. We have not gone to Office 365.

A few years ago the School made the decision to go to G Suite as it can be used on any device and really enabled the whole BYOD thing for students, they can choose the device that thought was right from them.
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