[seul-edu] Opportunity to make a difference

[Dave Prentice <dprentice@uno.edu>]

Guys,
    I haven't written for a while, but I need some suggestions. I had an
accidental but very exciting conversation today with the networking head for
my school district (New Orleans). He is new to the job, having recently come
from a different city. Up til now, the Information Technology department and
the citywide school computer operations have been in a state of chaos. He is
trying to impose some sort of order. He explained the following situation
and asked for input. I told him I would ask around. (He is familiar with
Linux, but for political reasons can't put it into the school system as a
whole.)
    A number of schools have set up their own unauthorized LANs with local
servers. It's my understanding that there are several different versions of
Windows being used on these. In some cases, whoever set them up put in DHCP
servers, but either didn't know or didn't care about how to make sure that
acceptable IP addresses were being issued. As a result, several are giving
addresses which conflict with those coming from the school board's central
or school-based servers. This causes conflicts and networking problems.
Since some of these have been running for quite a while, he doesn't want to
have to order them to disconnect their LANs from the Internet. The angry
outcries would add to his woes. I suggested that he require those LANs to
use static addresses, but he said that then somebody would need to keep a
database of assigned IP addresses, adding further to the chaos.
    Anybody have any ideas about a strandardized way to bring the LANs under
control? (Or any other good suggestions, while I've got his ear?)
Thanks,
Dave Prentice
prentice@instruction.com