Tech Forum

In one of our buildings we have "extended access" and a small family history workroom with a switch and some ports for member computers to access the network with.

This Sunday I received feedback that none of the computers in the room or the laptops hooked to the switch could access familysearch indexing. They were able to use their laptop at home to access it.

I can't imagine familysearch indexing is blocked by the firewall. Any thoughts?

dkcook2 wrote:I can't imagine familysearch indexing is blocked by the firewall. Any thoughts?

I can. (I can argue both sides of that argument.) Since you have a Family History workroom there, you probably need to talk to the Stake President about approval to switch to "General Access".

That would be true. Extended Access is more than Restricted, but is not enough to really do family history work. General Access is what you would need for family history work. Good call...

How much is different between General access and LDS extended? One of the main purposes our stake got connected was family history classes. Do I really need to get all firewalls switched from extended to general in order to make this happen with family history sites?

russp wrote:How much is different between General access and LDS extended? One of the main purposes our stake got connected was family history classes. Do I really need to get all firewalls switched from extended to general in order to make this happen with family history sites?

I don't know of any listing that's been made available that would provide any information as to the differences. Suffice it to say that General Access is what you will need if you're doing indexing and need a broader - more general - degree of access, which is the case in doing Family History.

You should clear this change with your Stake President to insure that he's comfortable with the increase in access.

Our stake president seems willing to go with whatever we suggest on this but what I'd really like to see is an offering of fairly restricted access but with all Church sites whitelisted. That seems like the most intelligent way to go about it rather than the websense modification procedure or having us get modifications to our firewalls only from the GSD. It would take someone a few days to get a good list together but it seems silly to require us to have more open access just so we can get to church sponsored sites. I'm not sure if the firewalls can do this (ie: check whitelist first, then if it's not there apply the policy) but it sounds like they can.

russp wrote:Our stake president seems willing to go with whatever we suggest on this but what I'd really like to see is an offering of fairly restricted access but with all Church sites whitelisted.

In that case, one of the more restricted levels of access should work for you. When we talk about Family History, we're talking about going to non-church sites as part of the research process. If all you're doing is teaching Family History, and just need access to the FamilySeach websites, then you may not need General Access.

russp wrote:Our stake president seems willing to go with whatever we suggest on this but what I'd really like to see is an offering of fairly restricted access but with all Church sites whitelisted.

LDS Restricted access, the most restricted Internet filtering, does just that. However I see many times when people refer to Church sites they quite often think of sites used for genealogy work. Those are two different things. The Church family history centers use genealogy sites regularly that are not owned by the Church and such common use of those sites gives the impression that the Church sponsors them.

russp wrote:That seems like the most intelligent way to go about it rather than the websense modification procedure or having us get modifications to our firewalls only from the GSD. It would take someone a few days to get a good list together but it seems silly to require us to have more open access just so we can get to church sponsored sites.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by Church sponsored sites. If you mean Church affiliated or approved by the Church then there is a number of those sites that can only be accessed by using the General Access filtering level. One recommendation that I have seen on these forums is to get the General Access level of filtering and then use a router with further filtering capabilities inserted into the local network that provides the additional filtering for further subnets.

Well, the firewall last night was blocking this page, although only with a timeout:

https://www.familysearchindexing.org/fs ... signup.jsf

To me this is a church-sponsored site and not some third-party. We had around 15 laptops hooked up and all received the same error continuously. However, if you connected past the firewall you could get this page without issues. I have not had time to debug it further as we were in a hurry to get it fixed to continue the fireside.

russp wrote:Well, the firewall last night was blocking this page, although only with a timeout:

https://www.familysearchindexing.org/fs ... signup.jsf

To me this is a church-sponsored site and not some third-party. We had around 15 laptops hooked up and all received the same error continuously. However, if you connected past the firewall you could get this page without issues. I have not had time to debug it further as we were in a hurry to get it fixed to continue the fireside.

The quickest solution for your problem would be to have the firewall upgraded to General Access. Others have asked about a listing of acceptable sites and there just isn't one available and it isn't likely that a list will be generated.

I would agree with you that the indexing site is a church-owned site and therefore should be accessable to the firewall using almost any access level.

Having been where you are, I would encourage you to have your STS contact the help desk and have the access level changed. It only takes a few minutes and your problem will be done away with.

Aside from this, I understand there's a method of submitting a site for approval, but this can take some time and there's no guarantee that down the road you won't have additional problems with other Family History sites that you may wish to access.

The General Access level is the best solution to your immediate and long term access problems.