No Default Gateway for curriculum

[Lipjam]

Hi
I started as senior ICT technician at a high school on last tuesday. In reality my role is Network manager as there isn't anyone else. I feel a little out of my depth but I am willling to push myself to develop.

On friday students were losing their connection to the internet. Also work on the RM server was disappearing. We have a Sensornet firewall which also acts as the default gateway for the curriculum and the Admin subnets. It was discovered that the load on the Sensornet was extremely high 33 at one poiint. We would reboot and the load would be fine for a while then it would climb again. I got on to sensornet support who suggested we had a virus that was causing the load. My suspicions were a hardware fault but in typical support advice I was informed that their was nothing wrong with their product. Finally on friday evening the student gateway NIC on the Sensornet server failed. So now there is no DG for the curriculum network. Needless to say I am not looking forward to going in tomorrow.

I have spent the weekend thinking about it and I think the best way to work around it until we can replace the faulty NIC is to use my workstation as a router. I would put a second NIC in my PC then set its IP as the DG on the curriculum subnet and route traffic onto the Admin DG so the students would still have Internet. My workstation is on the Admin subnet. What I want to know does this sound like the best option or has anyone any better ideas?

I cannot replace the NIC on the sensornet box until I am sure it's compatible. I am virtually ignorant of Linux which is what the Sensornet box uses. So I do not know what the procedure is for installing a NIC.
I would appreciate any help or advice.
Thanks
Liam

[GrumbleDook]

Hi Liam

I've moved this to the Network and Classroom Management forum as the LNM forum is really for the LNM setup from Microsoft ...

Onto Censornet. If it has failed I would not set something up to act as the DG instead as there would then be no filtering in place ... something that will cause more hassle than having no internet access at all.

If you need a temporary replacement you could try DansGuardian or a trial of SchoolGuardian ... load this via downloaded CD onto an old box with 2 NICs.

Not being a Censornet user myself this is the quickest and easiest way out I can suggest until you get a replacement card (and get your reseller to accept that it was a bloomin' hardware fault and they should replace the box!).

Welcome to the site and pop over the the general chat forum and join the 'introduce yourself' thread ... good to see that there is still life in Moreton ... next job is to try and find life in Frankby (joke for those on Wirral!)

[Halfmad]

I suggest for the first 30 mins of the day you spend it making sure everyone knows your working on the problem and that the internet etc is down for the time being, until you get back to them. Get an announcement made on the PA system if you have one or talk to heads of department - or if you do have someone working below you, get them to do it whilst you work on the problem.

communication in schools is key, if teachers know about the problem they can alter their planned work for the day accordingly.

[john]

Censornet really needs simple and easy NICs, a cheap £6 dabs value one is perfectly suitable. I tend to get them based on the Realtek chipsets and they all work fine in it.

[Lipjam]

Thanks for the help lads. I appreciate it. Just with the point of no firewall. There are three NICs on Censornet. One of them is gone so I would just be routing through the ADmin port. So in theory the firewall of the Censornet would still be protecting the network.

Thanks Halfmad for the advice to the teachers that is something I must remind myself in reassuring the staff.

John I was looking to upgrade the NICs to gigabit ones. Can you suggest a suitable one. Do I need to install any drivers or will the Kernell just pick it up and use it? Also do I need to reassign IP adresses and could you advise on the proceedure for doing this? I will probably get advice on this from support but forewarned is forearmed. I would appreciate an objective opinion.