Hi Simon,
Setting up your own email service is by far the best solution for
schools. I would also recommend blocking known web mail sites as there
is absolutely no way of knowing of controlling what is sent and received
via these sites and this has serious liability implications for schools
- more so high schools.
If your server is visible on the internet (yours is as I recall) then
you can set it up as a domain email server. You need to register a
domain and install an MX record in DNS pointing to your (email) server.
If you are really interested in regulating access to email then you
might be advised to set up a separate server for email... an old 486
will serve POP and IMAP clients just fine. If you want to run an
internal web mail system then you will want a pentium.
If you have regular (POP of IMAP) mail clients installed on your student
computers then this is the best solution. If this is too much work or
your firewalls are difficult to deal with then setting up a web mail
server may be a reasonable solution. You can try IMP from
www.horde.org. This takes a bit of setting up but is quite nice to
use. The other option is to setup AUC. Both packages require that you
run and IMAP mail server somewhere on your network.
Simon Bryan wrote:
>
> Hi,
> This is the scenario: High School (in Oz) with 900 students, we did not want
> the overhead of maintaining email for students so at first banned it altogether
> then allowed seniors only to use webmail (enforced by SQUID
> authentication). Now I am regretting that decision, at least 25% of my daily
> downloads are from webmail sites (mainly hotmail) ie all the advertising and
> images etc.
>
> What I am asking is....is the following a sensible, or achievable idea?
>
> Set up a webmail server in the school that students can join and which is
> accessible from the internet.....then I should be able to control all the
> garbage that goes with it. If it does not have all the whistles and bells of
> some systems, so be it. We would justify it only on educational grounds
> anyway, anything more than that then they can do it at home.
>
> Any advice comments etc appreciated, especially if someone has set one up
> in a similar circumstance.
>
> We are behind a series of firewalls, running 24/7 but only on a 56k link.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Simon Bryan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Information Technology Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> OLMC Parramatta
--
Andrew Dorrell PhD. Research Engineer
Canon Information Systems Research Australia Phone: 61 2 9805 2224
1 Thomas Holt Drive, North Ryde, NSW 2113. Fax: 61 2 9805 2929
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