Global Proxy on K-12 iOS Devices

[danny33c]

If you're using a Global Proxy on iOS devices:

Does it work?
Who is manufacturer?
Do you require user authentication?
How often do the students have to log into the proxy?
Is the proxy used while the students are in district as well as outside?
Are there any problem apps that have a hard time going through the proxy? ie. Edmodo, Schoology, Google apps Have you found SSL Exclusions to work for these sites or others? Your general thoughts on global proxy? No swearing please, this is a professional forum, hahaha!

Thanks,
Dan

[Eyoung]

it works.

We use Lightspeed systems, and require the kids to authenticate every time they change networks -or- every 8 hours

the proxy is global, meaning it works a advertised. the kids get held to the same rules set outside our network

yes, many apps have issues, we are constantly tweaking the block lists. things consistently change on us as well (youtube will change a data center or some such)

SSL secure sites work fine, others required pushing a cert from lightspeed to the iPads to work correctly.

General thoughts… no swearing you say?

Technically it works well. Having to manage supervised iPads adds a fair bit of complexity to the program. Finally being able to lock the profiles onto the iPads is key. Ive got plenty of kids with iOS6 Configurator built iPads out there with no profiles on them anymore.

As a necessary evil it is bearable. If I had my druthers we would not have it. It causes a lot of friction. The kids adapt pretty well, but I’ve found its the adults that are the issue. The faculty, in general, don’t seem to get why it is in place and only concentrate when some random item doesn't work the day of class etc… As an example, one french teacher just can’t seem to get that French television standards are very different than US ones. And these harmless news site are 1 or 2 clicks away from adult content.

[tlewsadder]

@Eyoung we are in the same boat, and using LightSpeed as well. One issue we are having is communicating with the device when it is off our network and not authenticated. We want the ability to push profiles to the device or remotely wipe the device without the user having to be authenticated.
Your 8 hour authentication window, is that standard for all faculty/students? Are you relying on OS specific user agents to handle the login/logout of LightSpeed on shared devices such as computer labs?

[danny33c]

I should have updated this a couple weeks ago when we finally got everything working with our global proxy. Our proxy is hosted by our local BOCES and have some great guys working on it to suit our needs. We've had to work with some of the web filter techs and vendors to work out the issues. We use Lightspeed. We are not using proxy authentication, but are using web authentication. There is a setting within the Web Filter that only asks for authentication if identity is unknown. We exclude our IP range for the district so it does not prompt for identification when the students are in district, only when they take the iPads home.

This configuration has been working great for us the past couple of weeks. No complaints from students or teachers is a good thing. BTW - We do not make the teachers go through the proxy off campus.

[nnewport]

I hate to bring up a semi old thread, but we are also using Lightspeed proxy with our iPads and have had so many issues we've had to take it off. We turned on require authentication so that we will have logs for individual users, but that is where we have the issue. The iPads do not always send the credentials over to the Rocket. It sometimes will prompt 10-20 times in a row, or every page you go to. I've worked with Apple Engineers and they claim they know about the issue and it is on their list to fix with iOS updates eventually. How is everyone else getting around this?

With our students Macs we just use the user/mobile agent and everyone gets the user agent so they don't have to log in at all. The proxy is what is killing us.

We've actually switched to a trial of Smoothwall for our iPads which uses a webpage redirect for the logins instead of the prompt that pops up with Lightspeed.

[danny33c]

Nnewport,

No worries, this is definitely still a relevant thread. Do you use lightspeed for web filtering? And if so, are your PCs using the lightspeed client? If they are, you can work with your lightspeed techs to do what we did in my post post from 11/10/14. It has worked great for the past few months. The students do not get prompted for creds when in district, but will get prompted once with web authentication when they try to access Safari at home. It has literally saved our iPad implementation.

Dan

[Emmert]

So, is Lightspeed the best option out there?

We asked our content filter vendor about this, and they wanted us to install a custom browser and disable Safari, which isn't something I'd like to do.

[danny33c]

I can only speak to Lightspeed as it's the only filtering vendor we've used. Actually Lightspeed had that stance a few months back about using their browser exclusively. They've lightened up on that though. For us that was not an option, and you should be able to tell your vendor that is not an acceptable solution.

[Emmert]

Is anyone using a non-commercial solution with the global HTTP proxy?

[conitsupport]

Is the global proxy setting removable? if set as manual? or does it need to be delivered via a pac file?

We use smoothwall for our filtering and they have a procedure to allow the school to access out proxy from home (not set up by us yet) we are looking at it more of a preventative measure so those students who 'accidentally' forget to hand in the schools ipad each day cant use the internet at home.

[avshch]

Does anyone use ZScaler with Zapp?