Youtube Edu

[jott]

We want to allow youtube edu videos for everyone on our network, but still block youtube for students.  Youtube has a set up walkthrough that helps, but I need some assistance thinking this through.  So any assistance would be helpful.  I have posted the directions below...

Prerequisites

In order to access YouTube for Schools you will likely need help from your school's network administrator so please share this information with him or her. This sign up process should only take minutes! Before you begin, make sure your school meets the following requirements:

Instructions

1. Make sure YouTube is actually inaccessible from your school. If students can visit YouTube.com, you can access the educational content simply by visiting YouTube.com/education and there is no need to sign up for YouTube for Schools.
2. If YouTube is blocked at your school, it must be blocked at the domain level for YouTube for Schools to work. YouTube for Schools will not work if YouTube is blocked at the IP level.
3. Your hardware filter or proxy server must support either HTTP header modification or URL parameter modification.

Follow the three steps below and your school will have access to thousands of free educational videos in minutes. Once you are finished with the set-up be sure to read our our additional resources listed at the end of this page.

Step 1

Choose one of the following two options, depending on which works for your school's network:

Option A: Add new HTTP header rule

Please modify your hardware filter or proxy server settings so that all outgoing traffic to youtube.com contains the following custom HTTP header. The ID to use in the HTTP header configuration, written below, is unique to your school's network only. If your school is blocked at the district level, this HTTP header is then unique to the district network.X-YouTube-Edu-Filter:4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw

Option B: Create URL parameter rewrite rule

If your firewall or filter does not support HTTP header modification, please rewrite all outgoing URLs to youtube.com by appending the parameter “edufilter” at the end.Example:

• http://youtube.com/?edufilter=4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk&edufilter=4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw

Exclude the &edufilter parameter from these file types: .css, .gif, .png, .js, .xml

Step 2

Remove YouTube domain blocks

Ensure the following top-level domains are not blocked:

• youtube.com
• ytimg.com

Step 3

Adjust Settings and See Additional Resources

Your network should now be able to access the YouTube for Schools version of YouTube.com. You can grant unrestricted access to additional YouTube accounts (such as teachers) and approve additional videos for viewing in your school.

To Add More Videos for Viewing Within your School

Simply add each video you want to make accessible from within your school to a playlist on the administrator account. You can create as many playlists as you need and all playlists created on the school administrator account will be accessible for viewing within the school network. To learn more about playlists, including how to create them, visit this page.

To Propose Additional Channels to Add to YouTube EDU

We'd love to hear from you if you find a great educational channel you think schools around the world should be able to access as part of YouTube for Schools. Please first check YouTube EDU to confirm that the channel is not currently included in our corpus of educational. If it's not, please let us know more about the channel by filling in this form.

To Access Additional Information on YouTube for Schools

Please visit our FAQ, which we update regularly. If you're interested in connecting with other schools that are part of YouTube for Schools, please join the Google Group. If you have any questions or problems, please see our help forum.

[bmorrison]

We currently have multiple School Systems that we manage that are looking at other devices since Palo-Alto does not support this.

[amansour]

You mean the content re-write that takes users from Youtube.com to education.youtube.com?

We usually put this as it's own category and have the link on the block page as it is quite unique for school board.

[epstech]

Last I read was that PA was going to plan to release the URL rewrite as many of the EDU environments have put in a request for that function. But I've seen no news of this since last. If you search  for enforce safe search there are documents to do this for PANos 4.1 but it is not perfect. At this point I'm thinking of setting up an squid box to dod the rewrite. As there has been little interest from PA to do this. Yet there competitors can do it.. I love the firewall and its features but this has been a thorn in my side.

[amansour]

Hey, I think I'm pretty close to a solution but I'm running into a problem. What I did was put a specific rule for Youtube the application.  URL custom category for youtube.com to block.  Then I have an allow list which takes each tokent (you tube .com /&blah education). On the response page I have an automatic redirect which takes the <url /> Field and appends the education component to it.  The problem is it recursively redirects.

[MemphisBrothers]

I urge Palo Alto to address this as soon as possible.  I am the Network Admin for a private HS we could really use it.  We deployed laptops to freshmen and have NO books.  Our entire delivery system is through the device.  Teachers use Youtube extensivly but students abuse the privelage.  Currently I have to block Youtube for all stuidents and have teachers run the videos on the projector for in class and students access youtube from home openly.

Makes it hard for the journalism and broadcasting classes.

[jbaublitz]

We are very interested in a solution too...

[bmccall136]

Same here....

[pmcglinchey]

Need it too..... New PAN-OS coming soon? Hopefully?

[ssigre]

This functionality will likely only be available for customers who have migrated to PANDB and even then i would suggest this would only be for things like SAFESEARCH .. things like YouTube for EDU will likely not be supported anytime soon .. our deployment is about 50K users spread over 100 virtual systems and we realised very early on that for anything that requires a rewrite it would need to be done off-box (we use F5)

Here are some of our code-snippets

https://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/iRules.safe-search-policies-for-various-websites-can-be-used-when-fro...

[mTk]

We would like this feature too. Has been requested from our users more than any other feature. 4,000 staff, 15,000 students.

[JoanGargulak]

We have been asking for this feature since we migrated to PA from Websense, which had it. We had been using Youtube Safety mode instead, not perfect but better than nothing, and now that is not working since the Google merge. We need this functionality! We are a K3-12 school district. Hope it will come soon.

[MemphisBrothers]

Why doesn't this post get a response from PA?  Not just a moderator, some one with some impact that can really answer to this issue.  It's not like an issue that has not been addressed in the security world, other companies have addressed and resolved it.  PA needs to give this some serious attention.

How about it Palo Alto?

Nir Zuk

Founder and CTO

Mark D. McLaughlin

Chairman, President, and CEO

Rajiv Batra

Founder and Senior Vice President, Engineering

René Bonvanie

Chief Marketing Officer

Brett Eldridge

Vice President of Global Customer Engineering & Support

Lee Klarich

Senior Vice President of Product Management

[bmccall136]

For now we are using a workaround that sends youtube traffic through a proxy so we can do a url-rewrite.  We use a pac file for students that is applied via gpo.  That pac file then drops all traffic locally except for the youtube traffic which is sent to a squid proxy server.  In squid you can do a url-rewrite with a perl script.  Its a big band-aid but it works for now.

I agree with MemphisBrothers - not sure why this hasnt been responded to.

[bjackson]

Whilst this is enough enough to do in a single site instance, it will not scale to a service provider model.

Palo Alto really need to address this..

[dyang]

Hi everyone,

I'm a representative from Palo Alto Networks, and have been following this thread.  Please know that we are monitoring these forums, and posts/requests like this do not go unnoticed.  For those of you that would like to add your input for a feature request, I would suggest that you communicate with your SE or Sales representative so that we can accurately capture all components of your request.  We cannot discuss roadmap items - whether they be additions or existing items - on these forums.

Thanks,

Doris