Anyone work in a Boarding School...?

[HMCTech]

All our boarders are in a seperate OU, the ports in their rooms are on a VLAN, the wireless is also on the same VLAN. On our web filter set up a rule to stop their Internet access after 10pm. They have prep time from 6pm-8pm so we have a seperate rule which says during those times they are not allowed on facebook, msn all your time wasting internet activities.

Kids with laptops still authenticate through ISA so they still go through the web filter.

[HMCTech]

If that is correct, then next question how do I assign an IP address to the students PCs if the DHCP server is in the School VLAN and not the Student VLAN?

You put the server on both VLANS using the NIC software to create the VLANS on the NIC, then on the switch tag the port the server is connecting to on both VLAN's.

If your doing VLAN's with little knowledge then you have a bit of research and reading to do but let me know if you ever get stuck.

[TheFopp]

You put the server on both VLANS using the NIC software to create the VLANS on the NIC, then on the switch tag the port the server is connecting to on both VLAN's.

If your doing VLAN's with little knowledge then you have a bit of research and reading to do but let me know if you ever get stuck.

Ah.. Ok, I think that makes sense, you are physically connecting the Server running DHCP to both VLANs, using just one cable, but can configure this through the NIC and Switch. Is suppose in that case if I had two NICs, I could connect one NIC to one VLANs port on the switch and the other NIC to the a port that is part of the other VLAN.

We haven't got ISA, just a standard AD setup, but are looking to use Smoothwall School Guardian as a firewall/filter (so would just point everyone to that as their Gateway). All the students are in their own OUs and groups within AD so will be able to alter the filtering setups for each year group etc. So for internet purposes would be using Smoothwall to authenticate for internet access. But, if the DHCP server (which is also an AD server) was viewable to the kids laptops in order to get an IP, then could they not see the rest of the School network by going through that server?

So many questions I know, but I'm slowly starting to grasp VLANs but haven't found a really straightforward example of how it all connects. My main issue is if you have two switches (we are using HP Procurve) and on each switch we have 2 VLANs e.g. BoardersVLAN & SchoolVLAN, do I need to link the two switches together using two cables (one between the BoardersVLAN ports on both switches and one between the SchoolVLAN on both switches), or can I get away with one link and the switches will just figure it out?

I might get in touch with you over PM at some point AlexPilot if thats OK to maybe make sure I'm thinking in the right direction...... we're not going to implement until summer hols though, so plenty of time to research.

If anyone knows of a good guide to VLANs that has examples of a basic 2 VLAN system like we are planning that would be much appreciated.