Full marks from William Hulme’s Grammar School

“We have exactly what we wanted from a web filtering solution with the Bloxx box – it’s the ideal solution for us.”

Alex Bushby, IT Manager, William Hulme’s Grammar School

Background

William Hulme’s Grammar School (WHGS) is a co-educational day school for children aged 3 – 18 and has a history of excellent academic achievement. Children are taught to attain the best possible qualifications within their capabilities and also to develop confidence, self discipline and a lifelong enthusiasm for learning.

WHGS previously used a software solution hosted by their ISP to filter the Internet but found it less than satisfactory. It experienced many problems with the software falling over, blocking access to all Internet sites or allowing access to inappropriate sites. It also found phone and e-mail support to be inadequate – the ISP/software solution provider didn’t resolve issues.

The challenge

Cope with the challenges of an education environment
WHGS has many international pupils, who access many websites created in foreign languages. It wanted a solution that was able to
block inappropriate foreign language websites.

Management and set up
Due to the previous problems with the ISP hosted software filter, WHGS wanted to bring the installation and management of the content filter in-house for immediate updating of the filter rather than contacting the ISP to schedule the required updates. WHGS required a product that could be installed easily and filter the web reliably and effectively.

No licence costs
WHGS needed a solution that did not require the ongoing purchase of software licences. With pupils frequently joining and leaving the school, buying and managing individual licences would be very expensive and time consuming.

The solution

Bloxx was recommended to WHGS by another customer who rated it highly, and after having a demonstration and trial of a Bloxx appliance, bought a Bloxx appliance.

Key features

WHGS chose Bloxx as it found it to be ‘the ideal solution’ for a number of reasons, some of which are detailed below.

Reliability and Management
WHGS finds its Bloxx appliance to be extremely reliable. It simply sits in the rack and does its job exactly as specified. The IT Manager, Alex Bushby, finds the management of it very straightforward and trouble free.

As the school is a multi-lingual environment, it finds Bloxx the ideal solution to cope with the challenges this provides in the management of a solution. The fact that Bloxx can block inappropriate websites which are in a variety of languages was an essential feature for the School.

Very Granular Configuration Possibilities
WHGS liked the fact that Bloxx was very good at being configurable to its own requirements. One such example is the access of online games sites. Most game sites add very little value in an educational environment and occupy precious bandwidth as well as allowing the network to become infected by viruses. If one was to use a sledgehammer approach, one would blacklist the word ‘games’. The problem with this is that many search engine home pages contain a category called games and so they would be blocked.

By configuring the Bloxx appliance to allow the word ‘games’ to appear once only, all search engine home pages would be accessible but clicking on a games hyperlink to produce a hit list of game sites, would be blocked. To allow access to educationally useful games, WHGS add the URL to the white list.

Cost
Cost is a major factor in the choice of solutions for education and WHGS found Bloxx’s no licence costs flat pricing model, a very attractive feature.