N4L Support

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Mark Edwards

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Jun 13, 2022, 8:34:52 PM6/13/22
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Anybody else a bit disappointed with N4L support and the technical ability of level 1 N4L staff? are they actually getting any training? 2 day turnaround on email tickets and the same for phone lately.

It really is bewildering why N4L has taking ability off the local admin to access the router\switch\AP so they can sort simple issues and forces us to talk to phone operators with no training that put you on hold while they look up for 20 minutes how to escalate a case....then you end up waiting for a network engineer to get back to you for a simple VLAN change.


Either give us back the ability to what we had before or employ more trained staff N4L so you can resolve issues quicker.

Sala'a Lologa

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Jun 13, 2022, 8:58:50 PM6/13/22
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Bloody Useless!!

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Craig Knights

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Jun 13, 2022, 9:06:58 PM6/13/22
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I thought the full access to the vSZ was staying with the schools tech under the new SNUP thing?

Arnold Santos

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Jun 13, 2022, 9:16:45 PM6/13/22
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Would it be a good idea to raise a petition to bring back those full access to school who have the capability to do so?

Jonathan Churton

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Jun 13, 2022, 9:24:06 PM6/13/22
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Yes, 100% - It got bad enough that we effectively had a direct communication line to one of their top support engineers to skip the front line, but they have since left. I've had my fair amount of discussions/meetings etc with N4L.

Unfortunately, they have to use a "One Box Fits All" approach to support many schools with various environments. It would be nice for us schools with dedicated/qualified engineers to have more direct access and save them the heavy lifting. The FortiPortal is a joke in terms of responsiveness and the VSZ Controller is becoming the same.

AFAIK, 
- Fortigates are leased from Spark and N4L's hands are tied. Limit management is available through the FortiPortal and "Reporting App"
- Ruckus's are owned by N4L and have greater control. I believe we can manage almost everything from the VSZ Controller, however we only have AP's tied to it currently. We also have direct SSH access to the AP's.

One thing I do when submitting a ticket is include every bit of detail, right down to the field name, option and value. Saves them having to think about what I want, and avoids any further delays or questions.

In a perfect world, N4L would be exclusively an ISP and Hardware Procurement Channel with a small slice of support, and leave the rest up to us (Bigger Schools).

Cheers,
Jonathan.



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Ben Green

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Jun 13, 2022, 9:34:06 PM6/13/22
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I attended the recent Ruckus training day (recordings are here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_np9MqMSQhgRT1Hy3N9SCg ).

They had some relationship with N4L and its NHR programme.
From what they said, we'd get full access to manage WAPs and switches - including at least WAP config via smartzone web interface (config pushed to WAP) and switch config via local CLI (config one-way backed up to smartzone).
They said N4L are pushing out an NZ-wide common set of VLANs, which we can completely ignore and use our own instead.

I am optimistically hoping that the above is accurate..

- Ben.

From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Craig Knights <craig....@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 June 2022 1:06 pm
To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] N4L Support
 
Christchurch Boys' High School
phone: +64 3 348 5003
address: 71 Straven Road, Riccarton, Christchurch 8014
postal: PO Box 8157, Riccarton, Christchurch 8440
web: www.cbhs.school.nz

Clayton Hubbard

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Jun 13, 2022, 9:47:43 PM6/13/22
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Hi All,

There is some good feedback and items raised here that we can address. 

I will work with the team around access as most day to day admin access is available and could be a permission thing, but there are some other points there as mentioned that needs further detail.

Thanks again
Clayton



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Sala'a Lologa

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Jun 13, 2022, 10:01:18 PM6/13/22
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Thanks Clayton,

you could probably start you with your "One size fits all" model. Just give us full access so we don't have to bother you anymore.

rgds

On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 1:47 PM Clayton Hubbard <clayton...@n4l.co.nz> wrote:
Hi All,

There is some good feedback and items raised here that we can address. 

I will work with the team around access as most day to day admin access is available and could be a permission thing, but there are some other points there as mentioned that needs further detail.

Thanks again
Clayton


On Tue, 14 Jun 2022 at 1:34 PM, Ben Green <Gre...@staff.cbhs.school.nz> wrote:
I attended the recent Ruckus training day (recordings are here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_np9MqMSQhgRT1Hy3N9SCg ).

They had some relationship with N4L and its NHR programme.
From what they said, we'd get full access to manage WAPs and switches - including at least WAP config via smartzone web interface (config pushed to WAP) and switch config via local CLI (config one-way backed up to smartzone).
They said N4L are pushing out an NZ-wide common set of VLANs, which we can completely ignore and use our own instead.

I am optimistically hoping that the above is accurate..

- Ben.

From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Craig Knights <craig....@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 June 2022 1:06 pm
To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] N4L Support
 
I thought the full access to the vSZ was staying with the schools tech under the new SNUP thing?

On Tue, 14 Jun 2022, 12:58 pm Sala'a Lologa, <s.lo...@randwickpark.school.nz> wrote:
Bloody Useless!!

Julian Davison

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Jun 13, 2022, 10:56:01 PM6/13/22
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On Tue, 14 Jun 2022 at 14:01, Sala'a Lologa <s.lo...@randwickpark.school.nz> wrote:
Thanks Clayton,

you could probably start you with your "One size fits all" model. Just give us full access so we don't have to bother you anymore.

Having viewed these things from a variety of perspectives (or 'both sides', if you will) it's worth pointing out that while "give us full access" is fantastic for the (limited) number of people who can _actually_ cope with the access, and cleaning up their own mistakes, it's a total nightmare for those in the position of N4L who provide the gear, and often get all the abuse when it goes wrong.

There is a big issue with applying external commercial-for-profit systems to schools which comes down to the external organisation needing to control costs. A difficult proposition when they're effectively handed their customer base (there's little choice for them in whether they take on a school) and those customers have varying levels of ability and often lack the knowledge to realise what they can (and can't) actually cope with.

Again, I've been part of a school tech team, and had to clean up after incompetent (or lazy) external firms have been through, I've also been part of an external firm cleaning up after a well meaning but under-equipped internal team have messed things up because they didn't know as much as they thought they did. There's a balancing act between allowing those who can, to do so, and ensuring that those who can't, don't get stuck.

Above all else the one thing I miss the most from working in a school is that solutions are focussed on quality, not profitability. Many businesses can't afford the luxury.


J,

Sala'a Lologa

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Jun 13, 2022, 11:00:53 PM6/13/22
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Just say
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Mark Edwards

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Jun 14, 2022, 6:22:33 AM6/14/22
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I understand the control thing as I'm sure most of us do in the IT industry, you spend a great deal of time designing and constructing a network system and don't won't to just let everyone have access to change and break things.....I wouldn't give all the teachers Super Admin access to Google Workspace or Azure AD admin center .

I don't mind working with an engineer on the phone to change these things(which I have during onboarding and at other times), but the problem starts when no matter if I call or email I get put into holding pattern for 2 days; when the school wants the issue sorted straight away and you know it's a simple issue but you don't have the access to change or even have the access to trouble shoot then we as professionals are stuck in a situation where we spend more time on the issue(dealing with level 1 phone operators) and the school doesn't get the issue resolved as soon as possible, causing more costs and longer down times....

I can't speak for everyone but I'm sure nobody wants even more bureaucracy to get in the way of teaching and learning....don't forget the core business here!

M

lfr...@jameshargest.school.nz

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Jun 14, 2022, 5:22:23 PM6/14/22
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Thankyou for creating this thread. It's constantly on my mind and a significant cause of problems we have at school. The reporting is an actual joke and next to useless. We're effectively trying run our networks blind and the fact N4L have access to the all powerful forti analyzer which would give us all the information we need to do effective troubleshooting and instantly help the users so they can get back to their core business of teaching/learning.

The reporting portal is kinda fine, but doesn't seem to show the traffic from all of the rules. It also doesn't allow exporting of reports, the app is not optimised for displaying data, very clunky. Not to mention it's always 24hrs out of date. 

We have read only access to the fortigates to get a pseudo access to the fori analyzer but this hardly ever works. Every time I want to use it, it's broken and returns no data for which it takes N4L a week to fix meanwhile they just send me raw log files which are a nightmare to read through and just waste time.  

It feels like we're constantly fighting N4L just to get basic service or responses. 

They go on about how great they are at security but use outdated products with known vulnerabilities and refuse to update. 

I ask N4l to update our forticlient software, takes them well over a month with little to no communication. then they decide they will just regenerate our PSK breaking all remote connections instantly at 5pm one day. The end result is they give me a slightly update client but without any of the deployment msi or mst so this can be deployed out to machines. Instead they say just manually install it. :)

accountability and transparency just do not exist at N4L

also, the actual staff on the Lvl 1 are nice (talking about you Jim) but like you say are just not qualified to assist with the majority of issues and then the two day (at least) holding pattern to get anything done by Lvl 2 is very frustrating. 


Julian Davison

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Jun 14, 2022, 5:42:08 PM6/14/22
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I don't mind working with an engineer on the phone to change these things(which I have during onboarding and at other times), but the problem starts when no matter if I call or email I get put into holding pattern for 2 days; when the school wants the issue sorted straight away and you know it's a simple issue but you don't have the access to change or even have the access to trouble shoot then we as professionals are stuck in a situation where we spend more time on the issue(dealing with level 1 phone operators) and the school doesn't get the issue resolved as soon as possible, causing more costs and longer down times....

Oh, absolutely. It's extremely frustrating to have to rely on an external party to resolve issues, particularly when they appear (and often are) fairly trivial to solve, if only one had access to do so. I'm definitely on board with (suitably verified) knowledgeable people bypassing the front-line support tier and going straight in to a higher level - though that has it's pitfalls, particularly when it's 'off the books' and the higher-level person leaves the external company (indeed in my experience, such can be true of departments internal to organisations, such as a University IT dept).
It's also hard to argue when the people questioning the policies actually do have the knowledge. Harder still when said people used to have access and could just fix such stuff, and no longer can. This is definitely something that deserves thought and a more suitable solution found (and there should be pressure from the coal-face IT folk, and their management in support), however it's worth keeping in mind the standard economies of scale, and how many systems were devised when most (not all!) in-school support weren't as experienced. What proportion of schools could safely have greater access (whether to systems, or higher tier staff) these days?

I can't speak for everyone but I'm sure nobody wants even more bureaucracy to get in the way of teaching and learning....don't forget the core business here!

This is ultimately the problem (imo) with a bunch of third-party organisations providing services to schools. While your core business is education, their core business tends to be making money. There are real trade offs when engaging an external party to provide a service, and all too often it's access to the internals - for some this is the point of going third party (so they don't have to manage the internals) and to others it's a frustrating side effect of getting something 'cheaper' (all too many money folk fail to account for the additional work 'cheaper external service providers' generate for on-payroll staff, which can totally eliminate the cost savings).

I'm all for schools having access, don't get me wrong. It is, however, a complex situation that is fairly universal. Sometimes you get a range of options, so  you can pick the one that best suits your environment. Sometimes there's a single provider. Typically, the people you get to talk to (in places like this group) aren't the ones who can make wholesale policy changes, unfortunately.



J,

Alistair Baird

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Jun 14, 2022, 5:56:45 PM6/14/22
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Allow access for "certified" engineers, https://www.fortinet.com/training-certification

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Dave Winter

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Jun 14, 2022, 6:07:46 PM6/14/22
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Hi all

We have had a good response to tickets and calls for support. 
This is mission critical where people don't have access to Router settings etc.
The secure access implementation has definitely brought network hardware improvements.
The idea of secure national ssids for learner to me is a good one and advances equity etc
There appears to be a more equitable outcome compared with snup wsnup.
Equipment shortages is a real issue for the rollout schedule. 

This does create breathing room for a refinement to empowering schools in the network management/access space
There are some real workons identified in the thread and improvements to self management of 
networks post Secure Access rollouts. In my mind t
his relies on collaboration/partnership between the sector and N4L.

I wonder if an open meeting might focus N4L on a next steps roadmap. Some of these changes will need to be near term.

We sent this to Clayton and the Team N4L recently.
We now have some feedback from schools where they are struggling to effectively onboard facilitators who visit every week.
Hoping we can offer ideas from recent experiences (to optimise the onboarding for 
schools and guests where secure access is live)

I wonder if there could be a table of what is available for each set of network clients,
and what if any role access customisation can be made (eg filtering, layers 4-7 in layperson's language (Chromecast/apple tv, etc).
Staff - Students - Guests 

With regard to facilitators/visitors who are contracted by schools often regular and repeated visitors
Bottom line is this group is less able to contribute and problem solve connectivity.
  • they often work across multiple schools - Do they need the cert for each school? 
    • assume yes staff no guest
  • is staff access needed/available for chromecast/airplay presentations in class facilitation?
    • Assume this requires a school google/ms365 login
Is there any capacity to customise the access within these roles? 
I thought you described this as available through the backend?

Is there any support communication we can put around schools for the secure access day?
We would imagine these provide a challenge for the migration. 

Thank you for the https://support.n4l.co.nz/s/secure-access information



Clayton Hubbard

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Jun 14, 2022, 6:37:48 PM6/14/22
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Thank you for this feedback everyone. Mark, we’ll contact you directly. 


In terms of the access levels, we’re all for empowering schools and IT providers with the ability to troubleshoot any network issues that the school may be facing. But there are areas where we have to make consistent changes ourselves, to ensure security standards, license support, documentation updates, etc.


Following the completion of Equipment Replacement, there are three levels of access for users:

  1. Read-write access to APs and switches (via the controller)

  2. Read-only access to APs and switches (via the controller)

  3. Read-only access when ssh into the switches

This allows the option of having some users with read-only vs write access which is common with least privilege principles. We’re currently reviewing these to ensure you have the correct level of permissions.


We’re governed by the granularity of access to the SmartZone controller and also the software version when it comes to features. The good news is we’ve recently completed an upgrade which added more capability around switches.


As some of you may know, we run compliance checks across the network to identify any areas that may need to be addressed or to understand potential risks. This means we may contact you if you make changes. An example may be someone creating a number of wireless networks and not understanding the impact it has on wireless performance.


FYI, the level of control schools have over their configs when their network equipment is upgraded is covered here.

Regards,

Clayton Hubbard
Enterprise Architect
The Network for Learning Ltd

P 0800 LEARNING
A Level 1, 117 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
A PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151  n4l.co.nz



Sue Way

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Jun 14, 2022, 8:30:03 PM6/14/22
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As a techie, it is frustrating to deal with level 1 help desk,  no matter whose help desk it is. When you know how to do it and what to do. But also I see it from the other side, its pretty hard fault finding when someone has stuffed up the configuration and will not admit that they fiddled.. . 

I am sure N4L will work out that some schools have amazing IT Staff that can get the job done.. I would be pretty offended if some level 3 support companies got full admin access but school employed IT, not teaching stuff, didn't.

 Like socks, one size doesn't always fit all.

Sue Way

Sue Way | IT Services Director (she, her)

Te Kāreti Kōtiro o te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington Girls' College



Steve Voisey

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Jun 14, 2022, 9:11:03 PM6/14/22
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Thanks for this Dave
And thanks for explaining the thinking behind this, Clayton
The purpose of this message is to let everyone else know the issues that PLD Facilitators will face. My technical knowledge and troubleshooting ability is relatively good. But the majority of facilitators are not able to troubleshoot particularly well.  
While there are only about 1000 PLD facilitators working in schools around the country, their needs are somewhat unique and specific. Speaking for myself, my needs are:
  • I have a MacBook Air, iPad, and mobile phone that all need to connect to wifi. At about 14 schools.
  • I visit schools fortnightly. 
  • There are about 20 sites that I visit (some schools have multiple campuses etc)
  • I have MS365 and/or Google accounts at *most* of the schools
  • I need to be on the same VLAN as staff, and/or students. This is to use Minecraft and/or chrome cast/appletv.

Many of my schools have an MSP who randomly resets my cloud passwords. This is already annoying when it only affects the Google Classroom part of my work. If I can’t connect to wifi for the same reason it will make it effectively impossible to do what I do currently. Resetting a password with an MSP usually takes an entire day. 
Recurring SSIDs will play havoc with my keychain. There is no efficient way to deal with that that I know of. If I go to a school with the same SSID the keychain will look up the credentials for the previous school and it won’t work. 

I have a meeting with Clayton and his team next week, and I’m pleased that they are offering their time for my organisation. 

Kind regards
Steve Voisey
Digital Fluency PLD Facilitator 

Jeffrey B

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Jun 14, 2022, 9:52:47 PM6/14/22
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I am very glad this subject has come up and is being discussed. We were coralled into signing up at one school I work at with all sorts of promises of flexibility that evaporated as soon as the ink was dry.  Managed to hold off signing at the other school pending actual answers.  It seems that these change as the project goes on and more and more push back is felt.

I have also suffered from extremely lack luster support from n4l even before their scope was expanded.  Some techs are good and all are polite but the amount of red tape to get anything done or sometimes even acknowledged is problematic.

I did have a nice discussion with Matt who was refreshingly honest about it.  I asked why transparency and access was not built in from the start.  Turns out such things are not important to the MoE and are only added much later as an underfunded afterthought.  They need to be told that this is a backwards approach.  We are all at the mercy of the one teacher no IT schools as to how high we can fly.

I am also very much not a fan of their implementation engineers.  The curt borderline rude emails we get demanding information on systems we never even had despite not even signing up are not going to garner any volunteers.  The fact they don't even bother to check if you have signed up till you try to warranty a switch is also troubling.

What I have asked N4L if I can talk to another school that has already gone through their upgrade to see what you can still do and how much of a hassle the secure access bit is.  I talked to N4L a long time ago about something like eduroam which has been in operation for a very long time and manages to not require onboarding software and many minutes per machine if they are even supported.

The program is a decent idea but the implementation is troubling and does it really matter how fast the wifi is if you can't use it for days at a time while waiting for solutions.

Jeffrey.



From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Sue Way <sue...@wgc.school.nz>
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 12:30:02 PM
To: Techies for schools <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [techies-for-schools] Re: N4L Support
 
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Clayton Hubbard

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Jun 14, 2022, 10:16:15 PM6/14/22
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Hi Landyn, thank you for your feedback on the Reporting app Beta and Filtering Portal. We would love the opportunity to get some more detail on your concerns and how we can continue to improve on the products that we offer to schools and their IT partners.  You should receive an email shortly to book a user feedback session with a few N4L team members working on the product.  Cheers,

Clayton Hubbard
Enterprise Architect
The Network for Learning Ltd

P 0800 LEARNING
A Level 1, 117 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
A PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151  n4l.co.nz


Mark Edwards

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Jun 15, 2022, 6:16:27 AM6/15/22
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Hi Clayton,

I understand the frustration around the timing when contacting the helpdesk and the level of capability the IT community needs. I want to acknowledge this point and say this is a focus area internally.
 Hopefully this means more trained technical staff soon. 

Thanks for the info and the acknowledgement around the helpdesk shortcomings, I do understand that N4L is busy with the rollout of new hardware but life still goes on at the schools. Don't get me wrong it hasn't always been like this however it's a bit of a worry that the Enterprise Architect is fielding customer support system issues from a large Crown owned company.

 I have had many people contact me off list to express their concerns with support issues and slow turn arounds even as small issues like whitelisting a website, unfortunately these people don't want to post on the topic for many reasons but mainly fear of repercussions to their employment, school or company....I however think that this needs to be addressed and is worth discussing.

In terms of the access levels, we’re all for empowering schools and IT providers with the ability to troubleshoot any network issues that the school may be facing. But there are areas where we have to make consistent changes ourselves, to ensure security standards, license support, documentation updates, etc.

I can't see this as a barrier to allowing all IT staff involved with schools.

Kia pai tō rā

 

Mark Edwards


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Clayton Hubbard

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Jun 15, 2022, 4:34:12 PM6/15/22
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Hi Mark,

As an FYI, the reason I responded is the discussion around access levels and the technology side. 
Your account for example had incorrect permissions and this has been resolved. Please provide feedback to me and I have requested this off the list.

Regards,

Clayton Hubbard
Enterprise Architect
The Network for Learning Ltd

P 0800 LEARNING
A Level 1, 117 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
A PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151  n4l.co.nz


Jonathan Churton

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Jun 15, 2022, 4:57:43 PM6/15/22
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Sounds like two models should have been implemented.

1) Full Wrap-around supply and support for schools. (by default)
2) Hardware procurement and warranty only with a Release of Liability agreement should anything security wise go wrong. (Optional)

I would hate having to review the amount of tickets our school has had and the turnaround time for each of them. We currently have 9 large tickets open alone. It sounds like N4L might not have enough engineers or the Ministry is requesting too much.

Also, while I have the attention of someone from N4L, please fix the speed of sVz and FortiPortal, it's a known issue.

Cheers,
Jonathan.

Clayton Hubbard

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Jun 15, 2022, 7:32:44 PM6/15/22
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Hi Jonathan,

Thanks and yes we working on it.

Clayton

Joseph Birch

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Jun 15, 2022, 8:13:05 PM6/15/22
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Hi there,

Hmm  - N4L. I gave up requesting filtering reports on the Fortinet gateway we have at school. There's filtering there but we have to request reports, Why? Just Why? I believe I was told that a portal would be created for this but  I gave up on that too

Kind Regards

Joseph Birch
IT Administrator
Opononi Area School

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Nick Steenson

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Jun 15, 2022, 8:19:12 PM6/15/22
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@Joseph

There is a portal, not sure what stage of trial they're in with that, but it's not ideal for creating "reports" per-se, instead so far I've taken long screenshots.

On that front I would LOVE for that portal to have an export function, even just to unpaginated CSV or something so it can be presented nicely (as opposed to those screenshots)



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Nick Steenson

IT Manager

Mount Aspiring College

T +64 (0) 3 443 0463 (Ext 222)

E stee...@mtaspiring.school.nz
    I...@mtaspiring.school.nz

A 101 Plantation Rd, Wānaka, NZ, 9305
W www.mountaspiringcollege.nz

 

Jonathan Churton

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Jun 15, 2022, 8:40:07 PM6/15/22
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Sounds like a Global Bugs, Known Issues, Suggestions and Planned Changes page would be super useful. Maybe even pull in the Spark Change Calendar? Even if it's behind our N4L Portal Login.

Also, a live https://status.status.io/ page/alternative would be well worth it.


Cheers,
Jonathan.

Mark Edwards

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Jul 7, 2022, 12:57:45 AM7/7/22
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You can request all you want... I'm not even getting support request email confirmations anymore! maybe I have been blacklisted for starting this thread. 

I got a call yesterday following up my 2 emails from last week to N4L and again got the muck around and not resolved, it's so frustrating! still waiting for a call or reply back. 

How can we have a record of support tickets when N4L staff ring you then say they are going to get back you and don't and don't record anything on the ticket or even create a ticket. If you are going to expand into hardware support for large schools that want MAC's done asap to ensure essential services are up and running surely you would have a better support system than this?

My 2c rant

Kia pai tō rā

 

Mark Edwards

Need IT support? Check out what we offer 

IT Manager

Far North Networks

Far North New Zealand


M: 021 1252983

W:www.FarNorthNetworks.co.nz



Rafal Janaszkiewicz

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Jul 7, 2022, 2:41:25 PM7/7/22
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The issue we all face is we don't have an option to go with another provider unless our schools want to absorb all the cost without any subsidies.

In the normal world if we weren't happy with a service we would find another provider and switch. As N4L doesn't have competition in this space it is hard to get any improvement.

One other issue is that N4L is owned by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education so I do not foresee any change in this space nor any competition being introduced. 

Hopefully someone from N4L can advise what is happening in the background to improve service because these issues seem to be very common and widespread.

Regard,


Rafal Janaszkiewicz
ICT Manager
Wellington High School
DDI: 028 2550 8784


David Keenleyside

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Jul 7, 2022, 6:02:04 PM7/7/22
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I honestly think they have a lot of younger people still learning the ropes, and that's fine enough as they do need to learn so they can become better.  However, at the same time, they appear to be light on people with higher-end skills.
When we were transferring over to the Ruckus cloud controller, I took the time to go over each step I was taking to make a set of IP filtering rules functional, as the ones they implemented from the originals were working in literal reverse.  Note: that was interesting, never thought I'd see that.

Now, competition was brought up, and yes, I agree there is a problem.  No competitors can enter many spaces, as services are being provided by the MoE for free; how do you compete with that as a startup, or even as an established business?
I hear the argument that better prices are acquired via agreements, and I agree this is also true, but at the same time, it distorts the free market and prevents the emergence of competition.  The resulting argument, after that, is there were no local companies able to provide the service; well, if you kill them in the crib, then this is inevitable.
What I don't hear, though, is the MoE offering to subsidise what a school chooses... which would offer competition, and remove the barrier to entry into the market.

So, in terms of OS and SaaS, we basically have Google and Microsoft; the competitors don't get a look in, and schools cannot get subsidies for choosing a competitor who is not part of a MoE agreement; the same extends to subsidised software.
Of course, the MoE also paints itself into a corner, as they become beholden to the companies they chose to let survive; the provider increase prices by 90%?  "Sure, we'll cut that by 75%, and that's a good deal.  Take it or leave it"  (An extreme example, but it helps to convey the point.)

Regards,
David Keenleyside, BSc CS & IS, CTech
ITP Associate
EFF Member
ICT Technician
Glenfield College
PO Box 40176 (Kaipatiki Rd)
Glenfield, Auckland City 0629

Ph:       +64 9 444 9066 ext 677
DDI: +64 9 441 9779
Email:    d.keen...@gc.ac.nz
https://itp.nz/CTech/NZ160799
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-keenleyside-626871/
The Three O’s of Backup: Online, Offline, Offsite.
The Three RA’s of Cloud: Run Anywhere, Run Anytime, Run Agnostic.

Mark Fielding

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Jul 7, 2022, 8:40:12 PM7/7/22
to Techies for schools
Thank you for raising your concerns Mark and sorry to hear of the issues you’ve experienced. We left a voice message for you yesterday and will continue to make contact with you today to get this sorted.  For any future requests, feel free to call Customer Support on 0800 LEARNING (532 764), which also ensures a ticket will be generated automatically.

Mark Fielding
Customer Support Manager
The Network for Learning Ltd

0800 LEARNING 027 476 0118
The Textile Centre, Level 2, 117-125 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151  n4l.co.nz

Jake Wills

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Jul 11, 2022, 12:31:12 AM7/11/22
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Well... I've had fun with N4L support in the last couple of days...
We were replied to a ticket from another school (with their contact info in it... not great from a privacy perspective)
I told the support agent (via the normal support email address) the ticket wasn't for us, after it was sent to my principal... 
They then replied to my principal again asking him to confirm that it definitely wasn't for us (despite the original ticket clearly coming from an email address from another school)
A couple of issues I have with this:
a) breach of privacy
b) I have no idea if our filtering settings have been changed because of another school's request
c) how hard is it to get this right... why did it require a second check with my principal?

Mark Fielding

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Jul 12, 2022, 1:18:01 AM7/12/22
to Techies for schools

Thanks, Jake,

I’d like to apologise for this experience, we have reviewed the case and a staff member definitely got this wrong. We will be in touch to discuss this further but wanted to let you know we have identified the issue, corrected it, and put steps in place to help prevent it from happening in the future. We are very sorry for any inconvenience.

Mark Fielding
Customer Support Manager
The Network for Learning Ltd

0800 LEARNING 027 476 0118
The Textile Centre, Level 2, 117-125 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151  n4l.co.nz




Jake Wills

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Jul 12, 2022, 1:27:52 AM7/12/22
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Thanks Mark. 

--
Sent from my phone, so please forgive any typos.

Mark Edwards

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Nov 28, 2022, 1:29:17 PM11/28/22
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After yesterdays N4L issues I thought I would drag this one back up, I gave up waiting for N4L to restart the switches(which was their answer to problem) and thought I would do it myself and I don't seem to even have have access to reboot???

Why can we not be told as School Technicians that changes are being pushed out that could potentially create issues for school networks and also why has access been removed to do even simple tasks like reboot? Have any Techs got the Read-write access to APs and switches?

"Following the completion of Equipment Replacement, there are three levels of access for users:

  1. Read-write access to APs and switches (via the controller)

  2. Read-only access to APs and switches (via the controller)

  3. Read-only access when ssh into the switches

This allows the option of having some users with read-only vs write access which is common with least privilege principles. We’re currently reviewing these to ensure you have the correct level of permissions."



ruckus.png

Clayton Hubbard

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Nov 28, 2022, 1:34:22 PM11/28/22
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Thanks Mark,

I will check and confirm. Please PM the school name to check your permissions for the school in question.

Thanks,
Clayton

--
Clayton Hubbard
Enterprise Architect
0220430155

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