Outer Heaven - Networking

Guide to Saving Money for School Technology

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:36:00 -0500

Here is a simple guide to saving money for school technology staff. I've basically put down everything that I've learned in managing my district budget, and I hope it can help others (and perhaps win some brownie points with administration) cut costs without cutting technology. My purchasing philosophy has always been no brand loyalty unless the brand is so good nobody can compete. I've nearly always found a cheaper alternative that a salesman can't touch.

Software recommendations are based on my philosophy of lightweight, inexpensive, and trouble-free. Nobody likes bloated software, and someone can always do it better than the big boys such as Symantec.

Computer parts
These sites are for various computer peripherals, components, and software.
NewEgg
MWAVE

Printers/Toner
Great sites for printers and/or toner. I recommend HP or Samsung laser printers, much cheaper than inkjets!
Quill
Shadow-Fax

Computer systems
Computer systems both new, used, and re-certified.
Access Interactive
Dell Home/Business **

** NOTE: I highly recommend staying away from the Dell Government/Education website. I've found several instances where they charged more for the exact same systems from Business or Home!

"Hot" Deals websites
These websites are places that post great deals (usually time-limited) on computer related products. Save A LOT of money!
Ben's Bargains
Anandtech Hot Deals Forum
FatWallet Hot Deals Forum

Coupon codes for online stores
These sites are basically search engines for coupon codes. Useful for vendors such as Dell.
RetailMeNot **

** NOTE: RetailMeNot has recently succumbed to pressure from vendors requiring them to remove their coupon codes. I used to frequent this site for Quill coupons in particular however they are no longer available.

Software solutions/licensing
Lightweight alternative software solutions and licensing.
ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus (This company offers EDU discounts on ESET software!)
Central Command Vexira Anti-Virus
INACOM (Microsoft licenses)
Microsoft Technet Subscription (INACOM offers large EDU discounts on a Technet subscription)
Academic Super Store

Continue reading "Guide to Saving Money for School Technology"

ScrubIT DNS for schools

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:57:20 -0500

Currently I use the Networks & More! SecureSchool appliance for content filtering. It does a great job, but it is getting increasingly difficult to keep up with the kids in getting around the filters with CGI/PHP proxies, clever word schemes, image searches and the like. In combating this, I've been pleasantly surprised by the extra protection offered by a free recursive DNS service called ScrubIT.

Basically all you need to do is change your router's DNS servers to the ScrubIT servers (67.138.54.100, 207.225.209.66) and that's it. I've found that there are no annoying or blatent advertisments on blocked page redirects, everything is clean and professional which is appreciated in a business or school environment. DNS lookup speeds seem to be on par or nearly on par with the OpenDNS servers.

I'm not positive how ScrubIT blocks web content. I'm guessing from their website it has a lot to do with user feedback and the various "sources" where they receive their data (likely some of the many available blacklists). I'm not sure that it blocks content based on keywords, most likely just URL based filtering. While this is far from fool proof, it makes up for it in the fact that the settings cannot be modified by users (unless they have access to your router). Encrypted URLs are not blocked by ScrubIT, so you will have to watch for users accessing CGI/PHP proxies to bypass your filters.

If you are interested in using this product in a school environment, I would suggest using it as an extra layer of filtering, rather than the sole filtering used by your district/building. For businesses, ScrubIT will likely be an excellent way to curtail pornography viewing by employees, especially if they are not web savvy. As an added bonus you will cut down on malware installations as ScrubIT filters those types of websites as well.

For those wondering about custom filtering ScrubIT is currently running a beta program allowing you to have your own blacklists and whitelists. I've applied for the program and am curious to see how easy it is to implement. I've yet to find a website that I need blocked, but ability to have custom filters could be extremely useful.

Currently I'm running ScrubIT in a school district and with a number of small businesses whom I contract with as a technical consultant. I've yet to run into any issues or complaints from my users, and a few nice compliments on the peace of mind offered by the service. It's worth checking into!

Again, the ScrubIT DNS server IP addresses are as follows:

67.138.54.100
207.225.209.66

Fix Error Code 0x80072F8F (Windows 2008 Server)

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:41:30 -0500

I've been playing around with Windows 2008 Server in anticipation of implementing it on the district network this summer. So far it appears to be yet another solid server product from Microsoft except for one little problem during activation: Error Code 0x80072F8F.

A quick search on the web didn't reveal an easy solution, and I'm hesitant to call Microsoft Tech Support to talk to some Indian I can't understand (getting a product license key over the phone with that accent is ridiculous). I double-checked that my network connections were working, proxies correctly configured, and that the virtual machine I was launching this from was connected properly. No go. Finally I found the solution from Microsoft's Knowledge Base, you just have to skip down from the Vista solution to the Windows 2003 solution.

Basically what I had to do was make sure the time and date for the server was set to the correct local time. None of the certificates appeared valid to the server, so it was throwing errors. Changing the time and date fixed the issue immediately and I was able to activate Windows 2008 Server.

Dell Inspiron 530 Windows Vista 64-bit Driver Pack

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:24:15 -0600

Looking for Windows Vista x64 (64-bit) drivers for your Dell Inspiron 530 PC? I was too, so as I did previously with my Dell Inspiron 531's I scoured the internet and found what I needed and packaged it up for public consumption. Dell sure makes it hard to find these babies, and I'm starting to think everyone has a vendetta against 64-bit Microsoft operating systems because drivers are still tough to find! If you've got a Core 2 processor, might as well take advantage of the extra horsepower and memory access 64-bit offers.

This driver pack currently only includes Intel 82562V NIC drivers. This will allow you to use your network, and after enabling it head to Windows Update and it will install the rest of the drivers you need to get off the floor and running!

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will do my best to answer them. This driver was tested on Windows Vista Ultimate x64.

(link updated, please comment if it goes down)

INSPIRON_530_VISTAx64_DRIVER_PACK.zip (11MB)
Alternate download mirror (11MB)

Contents:
Official Intel 82562V 10/100Mbit network interface card drivers (for Windows Vista x64)

Dell Inspiron 531 Windows XP Driver Pack

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:23:55 -0500

I recently purchased 20 new Dell Inspiron 531 computers for the school district with the intent of installing Windows XP on them (I'm not yet a fan of Vista). Interestingly enough I've heard that Dell is only offering Vista drivers for these machines at the request (or demand?) of Microsoft. I was more than a little annoyed when I discovered this information, but I've managed to track down every driver needed (that is if your Inspiron includes an nVidia GeForce GPU). I've packaged it all into a 153MB zip file, just unpack it to a USB flash drive and use that to go from workstation to workstation. Works like a charm and has saved me a lot of hours. Viva la XP!

INSPIRON_531_XP_DRIVER_PACK.zip (153MB)
INSPIRON_531_XP_DRIVER_PACK.7z (138MB) Help save bandwidth by using this 7zip archive!
Now available via Bit Torrent! (Thanks to bob9201)

LINKS UPDATED. Please leave a comment if you are unable to download the file.

UPDATE: Charles commented on how to get wireless working with your Inspiron 531 if you have a Broadcom 802.11g chip. Check out his solution below or click here.

Contents:
AMD Away Null Driver
nVidia Forceware GeForce 6/7 series video drivers
nVidia nForce MCP61 chipset drivers
Realtek HD Audio drivers

REDIRECT MY DOCUMENTS WITH CARE

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:58:33 -0500

I've been busy with life, so blogging has fallen to the wayside and with it server maintenance. Everything is cleared up now though things are still busy. The big thing to kick this school year off was my attempt to have automatic backup of the My Documents folder on each workstation to the server. I did this by making everyone's profile ROAMING, then redirecting the My Documents folder for each user back to their roaming profile location on the server. It worked great until it decided to eat the secretary's documents upon sync after a log off. It took me a week to realize that it's NOT a good idea to redirect any folders back to the users roaming profile location. Well I sure wish someone at Microsoft would have had the decency to mention that within the Properties window for the option.

Anyhow, the situation made me think hard about my backup policy for the building. Currently everything critical resides on a Windows 2003 server, the server running a RAID-5 array with a nice Adaptec SATA hardware RAID card. That's my first line of defense, at least against a hardware failure. The second is that the server is imaged nightly to another server on the network. That's my first defense against data loss and it has saved my butt more than once already. Other than those two things I have nothing else in place and it came back to haunt me.

I did some research on off-site backup options and ended up going with Amazon's S3 service + Jungle Disk. The price is dirt cheap considering the integrity and security offered, and Jungle Disk makes the whole thing so easy your grandma could backup her data. Now our critical data in the building is backed up on a weekly basis off-site, so if I run into problems such as a tornado, fire, or Roaming Profiles I should be good to go. Let's keep our fingers crossed...

Link Aggregation with Broadcom NetXtreme NICs

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:11:34 -0500

My servers both have dual gigabit Broadcom NetXtreme ethernet ports so I've been working on a way to combine them using Link Aggregation (IEEE 802.3ad). I managed to make it happen after some trial and error, combining dual gigabit links makes a huge difference when the server is being queried by multiple workstations. This is extremely useful when using them as Microsoft Windows 2003 Terminal Servers.

At first I wasn't sure where to start, so I went and downloaded the latest LAN drivers from Broadcom hoping some selectable features would appear under the driver settings. This didn't help me at all, so I did a search for Broadcom Link Aggregation on Google. The search yielded a result for a program called Broadcom Advanced Control Suite. Of course MSI (the server motherboard manufacturer) didn't include this program on a CD or even mention it on their website.

Finding a place to download this application was a pain. I finally found a package from IBM that included it, so I extracted BACS from the package and installed it seperately. I've included a link to BACS here at the bottom of this article so you can avoid wasting time tracking it down.

Once you get BACS installed and fired up you'll notice your Broadcom NetXtreme ethernet adapter is no longer boring. I won't cover all the cool features (the diagnostics are really nifty) because what we are interested in doing is creating a Team. Team is just a fancy way of saying link aggregation. To create a team, right click on an adapter and select Create Team. Follow the short wizard and in about 45 seconds you should have two ethernet adapters acting as one.

You will need a switch capable of supporting 802.3ad in order to make this work across your network. In my case I have a Nortel Baystack 5520 which (with the latest update, software version 5) supports it just fine.

I'm happy to finally have this working. I have 20-30 students using Windows 2003 Terminal Server at any given time, so this boosts performance across the network considerably!

Download Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 2 (26MB, includes 32-bit and 64-bit versions)

You do not have sufficient access...

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:14:17 -0600

I've been fighting with an issue on my Windows 2003 Terminal Server where users are not able to add certain printers. The error message that always pops up is:

You do not have sufficient access to your machine to connect to the selected printer.

At first I thought it was a permissions issue somewhere along the line, however the print server had identical settings for all the printers. Then I re-read the error message and realized it was a local security issue. I certainly wasn't willing to add the affected groups to the Power Users or Administrators local groups. No matter what options I tried (such as adding/removing account, rebooting etc.) the access error kept popping up.

Finally I decided to run a Google search on the error message. Result:

How do I get rid of the error "You do not have sufficient access to your machine to connect to the selected printer."?

When you are logged into a Terminal Server and you connect to a shared printer that is running on another machine the error "You do not have sufficient access to your machine to connect to the selected printer" may be displayed. This is because the "Prevent users from installing printer drivers" option is enabled by default in the local security settings.

On the server running Terminal Services:

- Click Start, point to Programs, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Local Security Policy.
- Double-click Local Policies.
- Double-click Security Options.
- In the right pane, double-click Prevent users from installing printer drivers.
- Click Disabled, and then click OK.
- Close the Local Security Settings window.

It may then be necessary to reboot the server or to force an immediate policy refresh for the change to take effect.

Once local polices was edited to allow users to install printer drivers my problem was solved.

Nortel Baystack 425-48T woes

nospam@example.com (Chris) — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:35:00 -0500

I recently purchased four Baystack 425-48T switches from Nortel to finish off my project to rebuild my network infrastructure. The switches were advertised as stackable, and I was pleased to find the cables required were just your standard IEE1394 (Firewire), no need for any $50+ rip-off cables.

After going through the manuals to make sure I had them connected properly, I noticed there was a UI button that was shown to select the base unit of the stack. IN and OUT were the options for the button, however on my 425-48Ts there was no "push" button that had an IN and OUT option, it only cycled through a series of LED flashes on the front of the switch(es). Even then the only reason I got anything on the LEDs was because I happened to hold the button in by accident while plugging in a cable for more than 5 seconds. If you don't hold it in nothing happens and all, and I suppose could cause a great deal of frusteration because it doesn't mention having to hold the button down in the manual.

While futzing with the UI settings, I noticed absolutely nothing was going across my firewire cables. I could tell because I had purchased some from CoolerMaster which feature an LED on each end that flashes whenever data is sent across it. After dinking around for several hours on all possible UI button combinations I started getting frusterated. Nortel's website didn't come up with any reasonable explanation, so I resorted to a Google search. The first result included this quote:

"I did find out that the 425-24T models have stacking in current released code. The 425-48T units will have stacking in code 3.5.6 expected to be released sometime first half next year"

Great, I have to wait until around January/February before I can do anything with the stack. Normally I wouldn't care, but there was absolutely NO mention of this in the manual, in the switch box, or in an easy-to-find place on the Nortel website. A simple print-out slipped in the box would have been just fine instead of wasting 4+ hours trying to figure out why it wasn't working according to the documentation. To make matters worse the regional Nortel rep wasn't even aware of the whole thing!

So, moral of the story is:

Use $5 firewire cables instead of the $30+ Nortel wants for the stacking cables on the 425 series of switches.
The 425-48T switches will NOT stack until the new software is released, which is due out in early '06.