MERLIN

Jan. 23, 2023

CoryB

 

MERLIN= Manitoba Education, Research and Learning Information Network is a special operating agency with the Department of Education and all schools in Manitoba except for one use, MERLIN. "MERLIN was established as a special operating agency to coordinate the delivery of technology to Manitoba's educational community." This was taken from the MERLIN website as a short statement of what MERLIN is about. Some of what MERLIN can do is block certain websites and areas of the internet so students don't get onto something they shouldn't be using their firewall. The school can decide what they want to be blocked by using MERLIN's firewall and technology, even such things as even google or YouTube but most likely would not be the case. The firewall would mainly be used to block the unnecessary things students might think about going onto or the predictable sites we know they shouldn't go on. Some more background on MERLIN's network services is, MERLIN is one of the largest volume customers for Bell MTS in Manitoba. MERLIN is also in the top three largest educational organizations in Canada by volume of traffic.

                                                              

                        https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2015/05/firewall_thinkstock-100583207-large.jpg

What are the benefits of using MERLIN (from their website) include, including compliance, best practices, consistency of application, simplicity in reporting systems, and setting up long terms partner programs, such as schools to make the affordable prices equal for all school divisions that use MERLIN. Schools using MERLIN is the best choice for filtering out websites they don't need or want students to go on and helps the internet go through channels to keep the internet flowing smoothly so they have limited disruptions and errors that can occur when too many people use the same internet source. It is also super affordable for all schools to make sure all school divisions can use the technology MERLIN can provide. MERLIN also operates with the following network security services such as DDOS mitigation, security information and event management, intrusion prevention, email spam filtering, and network traffic monitoring. 

                                                                 

                                         http://dns.ca/news/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/cira-square-700x437.png

MERLIN is partnered with CIRA (Canadian Internet Registry Authority, CANARIE, and the National Research and Education Network (NREN). They are also partnered with the Province of Manitoba, Manitoba Networks (Bell MTS, Rogers, Shaw, Xplore), Server and Network Storage Equipment (Dell/Powerland) and Printing Service. 

 

MERLIN is great to filter out all the bad sites we don't want our students going on and will be important to use for protecting our students going forward while making sure we get the best internet possible for our educational use.