ElectroPulse
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2013
- Messages
- 129
Hello all,
I volunteered at a school system in another country for a couple of years, and have periodically been providing support for them over the past two and a half years whenever something comes up that stumps them.
When I was there, I set up a (in my opinion) pretty great network (given the resources I had to work with). The problem now is that given the positions there are pretty much only volunteer (with a small stipend for survival), they are unable to get anyone in there with any kind of IT background/knowledge to support it ("what's a VLAN?" is a question I've gotten from the past couple of guys). I'm looking to try to simplify things at this point.
My initial thought is maybe go with a Ubiquiti Security Gateway, a Ubiquiti switch, and cloud key (since they're running Ubiquiti APs anyway). From what I of seeing the controller a few years back, it was a pretty simple setup. However, there is no content filtering (they've got a dorm full of students that access the internet there as well). I got pfSense set up with Squid to run a MitM type of thing that would filter HTTPS traffic, and it seemed to work pretty well. However pfSense is a little overwhelming and easy to mess up for someone that doesn't have much of an IT background.
What would you suggest for a reliable, super-easy management system that either has a very low monthly cost (very, very low - when I was there, I practically had to write a paper on the benefits of purchasing X device that cost only $20 in order to get them to purchase it - it was pretty insane at times), or no subscription cost (so Untangle is out I believe - sounds like they don't have much in the way of free content filtering).
Thanks!
I volunteered at a school system in another country for a couple of years, and have periodically been providing support for them over the past two and a half years whenever something comes up that stumps them.
When I was there, I set up a (in my opinion) pretty great network (given the resources I had to work with). The problem now is that given the positions there are pretty much only volunteer (with a small stipend for survival), they are unable to get anyone in there with any kind of IT background/knowledge to support it ("what's a VLAN?" is a question I've gotten from the past couple of guys). I'm looking to try to simplify things at this point.
My initial thought is maybe go with a Ubiquiti Security Gateway, a Ubiquiti switch, and cloud key (since they're running Ubiquiti APs anyway). From what I of seeing the controller a few years back, it was a pretty simple setup. However, there is no content filtering (they've got a dorm full of students that access the internet there as well). I got pfSense set up with Squid to run a MitM type of thing that would filter HTTPS traffic, and it seemed to work pretty well. However pfSense is a little overwhelming and easy to mess up for someone that doesn't have much of an IT background.
What would you suggest for a reliable, super-easy management system that either has a very low monthly cost (very, very low - when I was there, I practically had to write a paper on the benefits of purchasing X device that cost only $20 in order to get them to purchase it - it was pretty insane at times), or no subscription cost (so Untangle is out I believe - sounds like they don't have much in the way of free content filtering).
Thanks!