5 ms·

You didn't mention what country you're in or what level of schools you're targeting. This matters a lot. ----- A lot of people think schools are kind of "naiv

You didn't mention what country you're in or what level of schools you're targeting. This matters a lot. ----- A lot of people think schools are kind of "naive" and "under-resourced" but you will quickly find at least in au/nz that even primary/intermediate schools are quite a lot more regulated / bureaucratic than you might expect. I'm guessing the US could be even worse. Schools already have Internet. So, why do they need yours? Why should they trust you? What kind of organisation are you? How many of you are there? I noticed you mentioned "student ID and password" for auth. Are you expecting the school to provide you with this information? Do you like paperwork? Even if it's free, if you have equipment on their grounds and are providing a service to students you'll need a contract with the school. What's your privacy policy? What kind of SLA are you providing? Is the support free as well? You'll probably have to go through their supplier/vendor assessment process and there may be heavy restrictions around authorised suppliers. Are you going to have staff or contractors visiting the school grounds on a regular basis? Understand they'll need various background checks etc and you'll have to keep this stuff up to date. Be prepared to learn a lot about the various standards and regulations schools and their suppliers have to comply with. A key question is, are you going to do traffic filtering yourself or use a commercial service? You cannot provide a "raw" feed to students. The kind of traffic filtering and monitoring available to schools is now far more advanced than what people used to do for free with netfilter/squid. For sure, when little Timmy sees a disturbing _news article_ while hooked up to your feed eventually you will get complaints about this which will go from child -> parent -> school -> you. The kind of filtering schools need now costs money, how are you providing this service for free again?

Loughla 3y ago
This is 100% the answer for Western countries. Most k-12 schools have decent wireless in the US today. And they also have massive restrictions on its use due to all of those reasons.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  > And they also have massive restrictions on its use due to all of those reasons. not sure if crippled institutional wifi offers any tangible benefit in the age of ubiquitous cellular internet access besides the usual incentive of researching technical workarounds to the filtering.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Technically knowledgeable parents will understand that, but what do you answer to somebody saying “I don’t buy mobile data plans for my children, and now they accessed something bad on their devices due to the network you set up”?
    - geraldhh 3y ago
      i agree there is a problem of differentiation among commoners, but i hope we can agree that net neutrality is a good thing and policing content should be left to clients
      - lxgr 3y ago
        Aspirationally, I'm with you – but practically, there are parents that know how to set up the (much more effective, given ubiquitous encryption, VPNs/private relay etc.) on-device controls, and there are those that don't have the resources to do that. You could say that it's a lost cause, that their kids will just find public Wi-Fi elsewhere, that their classmates with mobile data can just open unmonitored Wi-Fi hotspots from their devices etc., that the better approach is to educate kids and give them the skills to deal with the complete unfiltered internet rather than to build more guardrails, and I'd even agree with some of these arguments to an extent. But you'll almost certainly find parents within the same school that view it differently and you will be fighting an uphill battle.
        geraldhh 3y ago
        karens ruining it for everyone... maybe the best thing is laughing
  - SR2Z 3y ago
    Look, I hate censorship as much as the next person, but giving kids access to porn in school is a weird hill to die on when the useful parts of the Internet (at least for middle schoolers) are unblocked.

Loughla 3y ago

This is 100% the answer for Western countries. Most k-12 schools have decent wireless in the US today. And they also have massive restrictions on its use due to all of those reasons.

geraldhh 3y ago
> And they also have massive restrictions on its use due to all of those reasons. not sure if crippled institutional wifi offers any tangible benefit in the age of ubiquitous cellular internet access besides the usual incentive of researching technical workarounds to the filtering.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Technically knowledgeable parents will understand that, but what do you answer to somebody saying “I don’t buy mobile data plans for my children, and now they accessed something bad on their devices due to the network you set up”?
  - geraldhh 3y ago
    i agree there is a problem of differentiation among commoners, but i hope we can agree that net neutrality is a good thing and policing content should be left to clients
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Aspirationally, I'm with you – but practically, there are parents that know how to set up the (much more effective, given ubiquitous encryption, VPNs/private relay etc.) on-device controls, and there are those that don't have the resources to do that. You could say that it's a lost cause, that their kids will just find public Wi-Fi elsewhere, that their classmates with mobile data can just open unmonitored Wi-Fi hotspots from their devices etc., that the better approach is to educate kids and give them the skills to deal with the complete unfiltered internet rather than to build more guardrails, and I'd even agree with some of these arguments to an extent. But you'll almost certainly find parents within the same school that view it differently and you will be fighting an uphill battle.
      - geraldhh 3y ago
        karens ruining it for everyone... maybe the best thing is laughing
- SR2Z 3y ago
  Look, I hate censorship as much as the next person, but giving kids access to porn in school is a weird hill to die on when the useful parts of the Internet (at least for middle schoolers) are unblocked.