RE: [seul-edu] Opportunity to make a difference

["Jason Mellen" <jmellen@cfl.rr.com>]

Just a quick thought from our school district...

I don't know whether I agree with their logic but each school does maintain
a database of standard IP addresses. This allows the county/school to track
which machines are accessing which content. As a student, I find the spying
and distrust sad but as a liable admin I see where it is a big issue. Just
something to think about.

jmellen

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Jason Mellen
Palm Bay High School
Webmaster / TSA President / Television Producer
Department Assistant - Vocational Education


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-seul-edu@seul.org [mailto:owner-seul-edu@seul.org]On Behalf
> Of Dave Prentice
> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 10:13 PM
> To: seul-edu@seul.org
> Subject: [seul-edu] Opportunity to make a difference
>
>
> 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
>
>