Open Letter to CIPAFilter

A

Astronutty

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
166
Dear CipaFilter,

I love working with every technology software and hardware item that I have ever come across, from command line to Apple-like friendly... except the CIPAFilter.

To put things into perspective, the CIPAFilter is a very powerful device, and is a rock solid product as it performs the advertized functions. Yet after two months struggling to use the CIPAFilter, thinking that me, the user was slow to learn or comprehend, it was not until today that I really examined why I struggle with it.

The reasons why have nothing to do with the power and performance, but everything to do with how the GUI interfaces with the user and certain easy to repair issues.

1) You cannot set a specific rule to expire after a set amount of time. A selector for the rule to disable itself or delete itself is needed upon expiration.

2) I have 77 Statefull Firewall rules, and they are not sortable so you can compare by title, protocol, or port. You should be able to have a priority level set that is then by default, sorted that way, yet otherwise sortable, even if it is in a reports menu.

3) Each rule is 7 lines of text tall, making my 77 rules over 7 pages of scrolling, which are non sortable.

4) When 7 pages down, the column category names are 7 pages up, so if you are trying to be super careful, you scroll up and down a lot to double check that you are inserting the proper variable into the proper field.

5) To make a rule non-editable, you must click another rule, refresh the page, or save the page to make that first clicked-on rule un-editable. It is so easy to make mistakes this way as you are tempted to close the rule with the red X. (See #8 below)

6) When you click on a rule intentionally or accidentally, the GUI changes drastically... then allows modification. I want all fields modifiable on the entire page, maybe changed items highlighted in light red so they can be tripple checked, then I can save.

7) If you make a change to a rule, then scroll down, make another change to another rule, there is no visual confirmation of which change was made on which rule made elsewhere before you save at the bottom. One rule at a time then save folks.

8) The red X that appears after clicking a rule, deletes the rule with absolutely no confirmation... (the red X in Windows, MacOS, and Linux CLOSES, not deletes)

9) No IP-MAC association comparison (that I have seen). I want to know who is attempting to connect.

10) I want rules with date stamps on their creation so I can see if a rule can be tied to an issue. (Naming the rule with creation date and time has become my standard operating procedure, albeit a chore.)

I believe the CIPAFilter is actually very dangerous as I am unable to sort and compare my new rules with the previous administrator's rules, to check for conflicting, possibly dangerous, or mistakenly made rules. I want all rules sorted together, so I see similar sorted rules together on one page to compare and analyze for dangers.

In CIPAFilter's attempt to be "Web 2.0", they have broken the user interface, and this they do in a "Web 3.0" world. (I do not like the terms "Web 2.0/3.0", but I do not know how else to explain my point clearly.)

I do not believe we should have to struggle to use our devices these days, this is a highly modifiable WebGUI we are talking about, and web GUI design experts are coming out of colleges like rain falling in the Amazon. One person could remedy all these issues in under a month of programming. My staff programmer is only in his second year of college, and I am confidant he and I could fix CIPAFilter in under two weeks.

CIPAFilter, please fix your GUI.

In honest, hopeful, and humble sincerity,

Steve Qualls
Technology Director
Chadwick School District
 
We appreciate it when customers articulate specific feedback so we wanted to touch on a number of your concerns with our product. We understand your issues regarding functionality and ease of use and we have been hard at work redeveloping our web interface. Our goal is not only to provide you with a pleasurable user experience, but a superior one as well. A significant portion of this year has been spent in heavy development of CIPAFilter version 8 and it’s preparation for customer use in the coming months. While the newest version of CIPAFilter will drastically increase the power, features and functionality of our product; we're greatly looking forward to introducing a fresh, intuitive, new web interface as well.

Among the countless improvements being made over our current web interface, you will be pleased to know that we are implementing many new features that directly relate to your feedback. These include more intuitive layouts and formatting, floating headers and footers displaying column titles and options for performing actions which are contextual to entire tables. The way data is entered and ordered has been improved and data/rules will now be sortable. We are implementing quicklists, a navigation feature that will minimize time spent by the user looking for specific rules. Context buttons for individual rules have even been improved and relabeled to avoid things such as accidently deleting rules, as you mentioned.

Overall, we appreciate the honest feedback; it helps us provide a better product for our customers. Our goal here at CIPAFilter is to provide the best solutions possible. We think you will be very pleased with the coming changes and hope you continue to enjoy using our product.
 
*Notes time of original post
*Notes status of above posted who just signed up today
*Probably came in via Google search
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///gets popcorn and beer and plops down on a comfy couch ready to watch the fun!
Happy that Untangle is in at the schools he has and their admins have ease of use and good relationship with their support and love it.
 
Dump them.

Other solutions.

Sophos Web Filter (what we use)
M86 (hate them, do not reccommend)
Lightspeed (heard ok things)
Websense (expensive)

We've had websense, then m86, now sophos. So far sophos has been the winner.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
*Notes time of original post
*Notes status of above posted who just signed up today
*Probably came in via Google search
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.
.
///gets popcorn and beer and plops down on a comfy couch ready to watch the fun!
Happy that Untangle is in at the schools he has and their admins have ease of use and good relationship with their support and love it.
Click to expand...

waits for you're popcorn to be empty, and brings BIG garbage bag of fresh stuff to continue watching :)

5

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DELETE THREAD /
 
Don't use M83. We use Telemates Netspective, and have used lightspeed at a few of our schools. Telemate is 1/3rd of the price of lightspeed.
 
After a 10 minute power outage, our CIPAFilter started acting up, and no one had internet access. I sent an email and I was called back in less than ten minutes. CIPAFilter tech support located the issue and resolved it in less than 20 minutes. The level of quick technical support provided by CIPAFilter staff is worth 10x any price.

I've been burned way too many times when service or product suppliers have abandoned me once they have my money.

CIPAFilter support is second to none, and I will remain a customer because of the wonderful support.

Steve, author of "Open Letter to CIPAFilter"
 
Having been the Tech Director of a ~5000 student school I can say I've been in similar shoes to the OP, although I never bit on the CIPAfilter. We evaluated many solutions and eventually settled on Untangle, primarily due to cost. Comparing Untangle's support to, say, 8e6 (now Trustwave), IronPort, LightSpeed, or N2H2 (ugh) I can say that UT isn't a good idea unless you have a moderately good IT staff already in place. I've run all of these systems at one point or another and if money were never an issue it would be a toss-up between IronPort and LightSpeed. I didn't have anything against CIPAfilter aside from the fact that Untangle's somewhat modular design allowed more flexibility as school policy changed.

Question to the OP: Have you ever considered doing away with your filter? CIPA and eRate are often touted as requiring a content filter, but digging into the law it becomes clear that you merely need a policy that addresses the whole "kids seeing boobs" issue. Content filters are the easy way out; an unquestioned path to federal funding. The downside is that they get in the way of your business: educating kids. They won't have content filters every time they're online, so why not teach them safe habits instead?

Sorry for the threadjack.
 
I don't mind the thread-jack. It is a natural part of conversation to move from topic to topic. Thanks for your input.

CIPAFilter upgraded me to v8.0 Beta Firmware, and it is much better for usability.

I understand the filtering is not required. Although...

I remember an article where a female substitute teacher's school computer had malware one week before the substitute teacher was brought in. The malware presented porn popups (20 times a second) that students saw. Computer forensics experts said it was not the fault of the teacher and that school IT staff lied about virus definitions which were claimed to be up to date when they were 4 months out of date. This substitute teacher was originally convicted of four felony pornography charges and faced 40 years in prison.

The major claim of the prosecutors was that the teacher should have turned off the computer, in spite of IT staff explicitly telling her to not turn off the computer. The teacher did not know the difference between the computer and monitor and did not know what to do as she was technically illiterate. She ran from the class asking for help from administrators, who threw her under the bus. After that conviction was overturned based on some, but not all the evidence that would have exonerated her, she was given a misdemeanor charge, a $100 fine, and lost her credentials to teach.

With the inadequate (criminal perjured) school IT staff and the knee jerk reactions of the public and press, the overzealous prosecutor, the inadequate school officials, and aggressive police, this woman's life was destroyed! A CIPAFilter could have possibly prevented the images from passing into the network.

I will filter and control the network with a very heavy hand, to protect students AND teachers.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/11/teacher-in-porn-popup-case-dodges-jail-loses-creds/
 
After a week of using v8 beta firmware on the CipaFilter, I abandoned it.

The features I thought were better eventually turned out to be a disaster. The double scrolling within a rule page and truncated titles of rules on the left and very narrow GUI on my widescreen monitor along with the technical issues caused me to lose my mind.

I've never been more upset in IT. I wish I had a Meraki or SmoothWall... those user interfaces are slick, neat, and professional.

Steve
 
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