Subnet Mask

[GrumbleDook]

Putting it simply ... it is the end goal of the NEN to have a school log into a client machine and that login will then give seamless access to a heap of resources out on the NEN or those purchased by LAs / RBCs ... with no need for additional authentication. This includes you, as a school, giving access to other schools to resources or information.

 

Initially this is aimed at LA or RBC level, but eventually it will grow and a user from Somerset (with the right access) will be able to get resources hosted in Lancashire.

 

Whilst people might wonder about the point of this ... just think of the collaboration that could go one ... the sharing of resources and saving of time and money.

 

There are other benefits too ... and there is a nice presentation about it all on the 'Net somewhere ... I'll poke google and try and find it again.

[Guest Guest]

Whilst people might wonder about the point of this ... just think of the collaboration that could go one ... the sharing of resources and saving of time and money.

 

 

Yeah itrs a great idea, in theory. Just a shame no sooner had the network been opened then busy bodies came in with their extensive training (CCNA course) and put firewalls with rediculasly restrictive rules in every nock and cranny of the network. Also they seem to go out of their way to purchase services which arnt on the network.

 

Great in theory but as of yet theres no realy benifit over a standard bussiness broadband connection, or atleast in the north east.

[SimpleSi]

Whilst people might wonder about the point of this ... just think of the collaboration that could go one ... the sharing of resources and saving of time and money.

 

Thats so unreal world talk!

 

Our (and I suspect many other) RBCs won't even let its own users from accessing our own resources from outside of each school never mind someone from another RBC.

 

Geoff went to great lengths with port reflectors and other stuff from Star Trek ( ) to try to support his primary schools and that's within our own network.

 

Most of the secondaries around here implement their own firewalls to stop others from getting at their resources and consider it madness not to do so.

 

...back off to cage [/rant]

 

regards

 

Simon

[sidewinder]

Wow, this is a much more interesting thread than I thought it would be when I opened it! Learnt a fair bit about why RBC's have things set up the way they do.

 

I agree for smaller schools it is probably better to use their assigned IP range, especially if they havent got any IT staff, and mainly because 255 addresses will be plenty for them.

 

But for a school like us, we're assigned 255 and we have 800 computers, 80 printers, 30 odd switches, 50 access points + various other devices which need IP addresses. So even if we were given a larger range we could still struggle, because to give us a bit of headroom we would need 5x the addresses we currently have, and I cant see that being given to us.

 

We run an ISA server and we have total freedom on what IP ranges we can use, and never have to worry about running out. Plus we have the benefit of having some control of what goes in and out of our network.

 

Downsides are that when new things are introduced on the WAN, everyone expects them to just 'work', which they would if the we did things the 'proper' way...but it normally requires a bit of testing.

Also, as someone said, private address ranges are used on the WAN, and we have had a few small problems - one I can remember is that a Citrix server that someone was trying to connect to had the same IP as one of our printers...

And of course, because they know we have an ISA server and arent really happy about it, whenever we enquire about problems with the internet they always say its just our internal problem until other schools start to phone up

 

Positives outweigh the negatives for me though