Linewize

[Ben Durham]

Hi all,

We are looking into possibly implementing linewize into our school for school managed devices, BYOD devices wont be monitored unless they are logged into their school account (Which installs the chrome extension). 

Just wondering what everyones honest thoughts are regarding linewize?

[Alistair Baird]

We use it, great for teacher control of student sessions (via Classwize) and great granular control of apps. Works great for BYOD, even when they are off prem. Gives a really good browsing history of users when you need it, no matter what device they use.

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Kind regards,
Alistair Baird
IT Manager

P  06 354 4198 stpeterspn.school.nz   @stpeterspn 1 Holdsworth Avenue, Milson Palmerston North, 4414

[Vern Dempster]

Hi

We are a very positive user of Linewize and Classwize and its usefulness. - for a long time

We had real times of internet overload until we got access to the fortigate graph and found that in the morning students opening their device started a huge update download that caused us to peak at 1000 or more. By using the linewize filter to block updates and App stores during class periods meant we now hover around 400-500 each period all day

MTCW

Ngā mihi nui

Vern

[Blake Richardson]

My experience with Linewize wasn't good and I personally wouldn't recommend it. If you are an N4L customer then you are most likely using a Fortigate which will do everything you want to achieve. 

Vern mentioned blocking access to the app store, this is easily done on a Fortigate using an iPv4 policy on a schedule. 

[Simon Wright]

Take those blocks off, if you max out your bandwidth N4L will upgrade you to hyperfibre 😉

Regards,

Simon Wright

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[Craig Knights]

We used it for years, we did use Classwize some, but it wasn't quite easy or slick enough for most teachers.  We looked at Classwize again more recently and for it to work we needed to load software on each device, I forget exactly what type of software, but it just wasn't going to happen on our students BYOD devices.

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[Andrew Hood]

Vern,

I would be worried that by blocking OS and App updates on student devices during school hours, students who only use their devices in school hours will not be getting any patches. I know that this probably would not impact student mobile phone devices, but a lot of unpatched Windows and ChromeOS student BYOD laptop may give you other security or operational issues.

Andrew

On Wednesday, June 5, 2024 at 8:23:29 AM UTC+12 Vern Dempster wrote:

[Alistair Baird]

Just yesterday had a group of young boys turn up saying their internet was blocked. Looked at the screen and it was Linewize and said "Your Teacher has blocked your internet". When i asked who their teacher was, I knew he was off site looking after sick kids, so I rang him and he said yes, he was watching what they were doing and they were off task, so he blocked it and sent emails to the dean and DP to call past and help out the reliever!

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[Craig Knights]

For Apple an update caching server is pretty much install and forget.  An old ish Mac with a big drive.

For windows I believe they share in P2P manner on your LAN?

Craig

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[Adam Alexander]

We use it in a primary setting, and I second Alistair's rundown. We only use the cloud product (don't have the on-premise device), so do have some issues controlling BYOD Windows and Mac. Because this might be 1-2 devices any given year, it's not really an issue we see the need to fix.

We think it's well worth the investment and a great classroom tool for teachers to dull down the noise of what kids can be accessing. It's also a laugh to see what some kids Google 🤣 that come through blocked - the blue-footed booby being a favourite.

[Craig Knights]

I once rang to see why my Google search wasn't working..

What did you Google they said?

Naked Broadband.

Oops, bye.

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[Julian Davison]

Ah, the old Scunthorpe trick again 

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[Craig Knights]

Experts exchange?

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[Pete Mundy]

Video titled "Why Web Filters Don't Work: Penistone and the Scunthorpe Problem":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE

[Julian Davison]

Web filters: trapping harmless content since last century (when all we had was plain text regex) 

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[Andrew Hood]

I have been battling this problem since I worked for BT Internet in 1996. That Tom Scott video does a really good job of highlighting the issue. Next time you are annoyed at a false positive or false negative in a filtering or security system remember that being 99.9999% accurate still gives problems when you do something millions of times a day. 

On a side note, I grew up about 20km from Penistone and yes it caused school boy sniggers on class trips and would agree there are very few reasons to go to Scunthorpe.

Andrew