Northern Grid for Learning - School Broadband, eSafety, Learning Resources and More

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1.1 SUMMARY

The ICT suites are well resourced and managed. Modern well-equipped workstations run the XP operating system. The user’s desktop is securely locked down stopping unauthorised applications from being run and configuration changes being made. The domain login and application access times were all within acceptable levels. The network was very quiet as the assessment was conducted during the summer holiday period. DNS lookups and trace checks were all within expected tolerances. The server farm was effectively managed with a couple of notable exceptions. The web server was susceptible to attack and requires patching; some routine housekeeping tasks were not recently carried out. File systems had high levels of fragmentation RAID management software was not installed stopping effective monitoring of the RAID server array.

The Network Ranger product provides an easy to use, consistent and reliable workstation and application management solution and was effectively deployed. No monitoring or management of the network infrastructure was possible as no administration access was available. SNMP was not activated on any of the switches. The use of four mobile wireless trolleys when in use would significantly impact on the performance of the whole network, as broadcasts generated at the WAP would be propagated throughout the switch network. The wireless systems also posed a security threat as encryption and authentication was not enforced when users connect to the network.

The lack of any switch management may be allowing configuration and device problems to go unnoticed. The 3Com 4400 access switches are well specified and currently adequate as long as desktop connectivity at 100M is acceptable. The 3Com 4900 aggregation (core and distribution) switch lacks sufficient Gigabit ports and may need to be upgraded in the near future. The email and proxy filtering services are inadequate and do not fulfil BECTA requirements. The RM Easymail service lacks any inappropriate banned word list and the Freedom2teach filtering service requires manual database entry for URL filtering. Despite three levels of filtering, access to well-known inappropriate content was still possible.

The NEN connection and routing is not working correctly as Audio Networks hosted by LGfL the most popular NEN resource is not accessible. I am informed that their local RBC has routing issues. The school and ISP should ensure these issues are remedied as soon as possible. The ISP has confirmed that the utilisation of the schools 10M LES link to the Internet is low and always below 30%. Web response times, as measured by Pakateer, are within specified parameters.

Management and technical support on the LAN was of a high quality but the lack of available documentation needs to be addressed. Physical network diagrams, security policies, AUP and backup and disaster recovery solutions all need to compiled and documented to ensure security, consistency and quality across the network. Baselining the network and continuously monitoring for changes are critical to maximising performance, identifying error conditions and determining where future investment is needed.