The Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online regional broadband consortium (RBC) is made up of the two local authorities Cumbria County Council and Lancashire County Council and provides broadband connectivity to schools across the region. Through its network providers Lancaster University Network Services, the RBC aims to provide an efficient and secure IP network for all the schools connected to it. In addition the RBC is also inter-connected with all the other 9 English RBCs via UKERNA.
In response to increasing numbers of requests from schools to enable secure remote access into school networks CLEO ran a pilot project in Autumn 2004/Spring 2005 to test remote access across its network. Both LEAs had previously made a policy decision not to provide schools with global IP addresses to ensure that the CLEO wide area network, of which the schools connected to CLEO broadband are a part, remains secure. As such the pilot began the process of trialing solutions to meet schools varying requirements. The first of these, virtual private network (VPN), with or without remote desktop (RDP) was piloted by15 schools in autumn 2004/spring 2005. More recently CLEO have trialled and successfully implemented CLEO Remote Folder Access and Remote Desktop, the latter has now replaced the original VPN service.
This section of the website provides background information to help you establish what exactly you want remote access to achieve for your school; which solution will meet your requirements and to help you assess your readiness to implement remote access at your school. It has details on applying for remote access, who to contact for more information and support.
