Notes from the field: In the continuation from his previous blog, Principal Systems Engineer Jeff Haydel explains how a school optimized its use of Aerohive AVC in order to get YouTube use under control.
After the success with stamping out BitTorrent on the school WLAN, the IT admin was eager to put the Application Visibility and Control (AVC) dashboard through its paces. He was eager to see what else his students were doing that he didn’t think they should have been, and to block it.
So we opened up the Dashboard and looked at the next biggest culprit applications.
YouTube quickly came up as a top bandwidth hog, and he eagerly proclaimed, “Block it!” (I think he is ex-military so this came with a slammed fist and significant emotion.) I suggested that we research who was using the YouTube traffic, and for what reason before we blocked it, as YouTube can have educational uses.
Our investigation of the YouTube traffic tracked the users down to three students. Because this IT admin was also using Aerohive’s PPSK functionality and providing a unique key to each user, he was able to immediately identify who these three students were.
He explained that the school was trying to assist in integrating six foreign nationals, whose parents were newly hired research assistants at the local large university. These six students knew very little English and almost nothing of American culture, having only arrived in the country a few short weeks ago. These YouTube users were three of those students.
As it turns out, the students in question had all been in Biology together that period, and we were able to question the biology teacher after class. Her report was that all of the students were using their devices to research an advanced biology topic for a report due at the end of the week. She also was adamant that YouTube should not have been a part of that research.
Further investigation found one of the students in question and we were able to have that student show us what YouTube video they were watching. It turned out to be a video of a college professor explaining the topic in question in this student’s native dialect (thank you YouTube for English subtitles). This turned out to indeed be a proper educational use for YouTube.
I was then able to show the IT admin another great feature of Aerohive. Earlier I was able to present Aerohive’s advanced L7 engine providing application visibility followed by Aerohive’s firewall blocking those same applications.
Now I was able to showcase Aerohive’s QoS engine that allowed for prioritization based upon those same application signatures. The IT admin chose to prioritize the YouTube traffic up higher than standard HTTP traffic in order to ensure those six students could make use of YouTube to further their education while they continued to chip away at the significant language and cultural barriers in front of them.
Not a bad day’s work I say, and all before lunch!