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jbarker
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Since YouTube for School's is no longer an option, what should we use for filtering?

As many of you know, YouTube for School has not allowed any new signups for more than 11 months. This leaves a very big problem for network admins for school's as the number one request is to unblock individual videos on YouTube. Right now, it appears there is no solution. Fortinet support tells me straight up there is no way to do this with their system, but I just cannot believe that is true. We used two filtering products before buying the 200D and both of them allowed unblocking SSL Url's with parameters. And perhaps the solution is to move back to those solutions, but unfortunately we have already invested money into our 200D. If anyone has any solutions they can share, please? 

9 REPLIES 9
Daniel_Justa_FTNT

Hello,

 

You can block the whole YouTube category and create a Static URL Filter with individual URLs of YouTube videos you wish to unblock. As for a specific CATEGORY, this is not possible and it requires requesting and receiving a rating for every single YouTube video to determine if it should be blocked/allowed which isn't a functionality we support or have access to. There are other alternatives, as you can use third party website which allows you to create a profile of videos and edit/maintain the videos and have a policy pointed to the site which kind acts as proxy for YouTube.

 

Let me know if this helps.

 

 

jbarker

Daniel Justa_FTNT wrote:

Hello,

 

You can block the whole YouTube category and create a Static URL Filter with individual URLs of YouTube videos you wish to unblock. As for a specific CATEGORY, this is not possible and it requires requesting and receiving a rating for every single YouTube video to determine if it should be blocked/allowed which isn't a functionality we support or have access to. There are other alternatives, as you can use third party website which allows you to create a profile of videos and edit/maintain the videos and have a policy pointed to the site which kind acts as proxy for YouTube.

 

Let me know if this helps.

 

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

We tried using a third party web site and unblocking it. For example ViewPure.com. But the actual youtube videos would not play. When I monitored the website on the Foritgate interface it listed youtube.com as being blocked. We could see the ViewPure.com website, but no videos would play. 

 

We are currently blocking the Category - Streaming Media and Download. I have created static url filters with the videos I want to allow but it does not work. Fortinet Support remotely connected and tried it with no success either. They tried simple rules, regex rules etc. They told me it was not possible since the youtube.com domain being blocked in the Streaming Media category will override my static urls. 

 

I hope I am just missing something to make this work, really frustrated. 

jbarker

Just to be more clear.

 

I am able to allow a url such as test.youtube.com but I cannot allow a url that is youtube.com/watch?v=id

 

Always gets blocked as youtube.com under streaming media and downloads.

 

 

Christopher_McMullan

The order of operations for web filtering is:

1. URL filter

2. FortiGuard category filter

3. Web content filter

4. Advanced webfilter profile constraints

5. A/V or other scanning

 

If you allow a site in a URL filter, it will still progress through the other four steps for evaluation. If you exempt a specific URL, on the other hand, no other scanning will be applied. For those very specific URLs, that may be what you are looking for. Try exempting them instead.

Regards, Chris McMullan Fortinet Ottawa

jbarker

Christopher McMullan_FTNT wrote:

The order of operations for web filtering is:

1. URL filter

2. FortiGuard category filter

3. Web content filter

4. Advanced webfilter profile constraints

5. A/V or other scanning

 

If you allow a site in a URL filter, it will still progress through the other four steps for evaluation. If you exempt a specific URL, on the other hand, no other scanning will be applied. For those very specific URLs, that may be what you are looking for. Try exempting them instead.

Thank you. Both Allow and Exempt do seem to work for full URL's if the combination of Full SSL Inspection and SSH Deep Scan are enabled. Which does make sense since URL parameters are encrypted by SSL. Now we just need to figure out a way for Certificates to play nice with our mobile and BYOD devices. 

Mbutler522010

Youtube for Education now has a solution. See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2695317?hl=en

 

GrantWilson

There're currently three major resources for teachers and educators who want to use YouTube for school environment: Youtube / education; Youtube / teachers and Youtube / schools.

But actually, we're using SchoolTube for K-12 schools. It has a feature to link YouTube EDU videos as well.

 

 

 

Fortinet access: https://www.schooltube.com/media/setting+up+a+youtube+video+play+ theessayservice

RafaelSantos

Mbutler522010 wrote:

Youtube for Education now has a solution. See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2695317?hl=en fuente

 

Gracias por este enlace! Me ayudó mucho.

Lurker

I try exepmt action. It's not work. moreover exempt break access fore some allowed sites

Moreover "exempt" action break access fore some allowed sites as ingos.ru Support ticket in progress.

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