Originally posted by LoudMusic
Pako:
Hey man, pop-ins are always welcome (:
I actually worked on the web team at a local university. The IT department (LAN Nazis) were pretty much clueless, and there were talks of rolling out laptops and wireless networking for freshmen next semester. I bailed out before they started asking ME questions.
GilesGuthrie:
Right on man. I'm not an avid supporter of the Evil Empire, but they sure do have their software headed in the right direction. Windows 2000/XP across the board will make your life a lot simpler. And how in the world do you manage that many printers? That's nearly a printer at every desktop! I've only got about 55 workstations, but our printers handle 5 to 8 users each. That would make a drastic change in your support costs. You have to watch your print queing though, because it can get nasty. A friend of mine has a great story about configuring a network printer on a corporate campus of 5,000+. He watched his print job go through a que to a printer that was just down the hall from him. It took about fifteen minutes for it to print. Then he walked over to the printer and had it print its configuration. He reconfigured his printer to print directly to the IP of the printer. Now his print jobs take less than 30 seconds (:
If there is anyone more evil than Microsoft, it would be Novell. Choose the lesser of the two evils.
A side note - network security, deny all, allow http and pop3. End of discussion. Everything else will only cause you headaches. That's where most universities are headed, due to peer to peer sharing software.
~LoudMusic
~LoudMusic:
The problem we have is a cumbersome procurement system, so people go down to PC World and buy themselves a little natty deskjet. If they're being really considerate, they'll choose an HP one! It all comes down to management not understanding the TCO issue. You tell them that they can throw out their working printer, spend a grand on a new one, and in three years they'll be in profit, and you get the rabbit-in-headlights stare. Also, we're a lot of small offices, and so it's not well received when we try to make someone walk down a corridor to get a print. It's tragic, I know. I
like to walk down the corridor to get a print, but that's probably more to do with the pretty girl sitting next to the printer!
On MS v Novell - I understand what Novell are trying to do, but MS are so far ahead of them it's scary. OK, so you need big boxes to run MS software, but when you can get a twin PIII/1000 with 2GB RAM and 3x18GB disks for £3k, who really cares?
On the printing side, we use JetDirect, and it rocks, especially with WebJetAdmin, which I only discovered last week!
Pako:
Hiya, you're welcome to join in!
We're going to be setting up the internal WAN routers to only allow ICA (Citrix) and Print traffic, so that will help. Externally, it's a bit more complicated since we have C/S apps running over the internet, so our ACL will be a bit more cluttered. But I see what you're saying, and we'll keep it as comprehensive as possible. At the moment, our firewall just sits there calmly whistling as all the attacks come rolling in. It's quite nice!
Deathhawk:
If the family get too much, just point out that they are askingyou to do unpaid overtime, and that, whilst you don't mind helping them, it
is work to you. If you're nice and calm when you say it, they should respect your free time a lot more. Worked for me.
) don't get the issue. So, then they look surprised when we tell them that a 36 year old woman they know to be on maternity leave yesterday downloaded 40Mb of teen porn, and they look all surprised! They don't understand that it's the temp, who has been given the woman's password. These people want internet access derestricted!
Using ACL's (access controll lists) programmed into the routers can really help too, as well as VLan's in this area, however, ACL's are only as good as the person writing the ACL. 
