glennda

@john uses voip with his i think, From when i spoke with somebody in brighton who had done the trixbox thing and said it worked fine. If you are looking at sip handsets i can highly recommend yealink ones.

I would recommend the lenovo range - personally i have an E430, 8Gb ram 256gb ssd and it flies, use it on the road and with the new usb 3.0 docks at a desk its just like working on a normal machine with dual screen etc. Ive just rolled out 25 t430U with a client and they have gone down a brilliantly. Never had problems with parts but then i deal with lenovo direct. Uk support is still from IBM

Ive seen it happen when cables do just randomly start giving errors due to damage although never quite worked out how it happens.

Don't get me wrong I prefer Gnome but unity took some getting used to

Along with Samba 4 I can see this hopefully starting to make more and more ground on the Business side of things. Unity is a lot easier to navigate then Windows 8

My Last place had a large roll laminator. Instructions stuck on it, as long as the teachers didn't change the temperature it was a case of turning it on let it warm up and then press start and feed. I've found with the pouch type it all depends on the pouchs themselves and isn't normally the laminator which is the problem.

If you use the VAMT then you can force re-activation against the server for the first 25 machines to get the count up.

I'm at a clients doing a wireless survey!! Hope to leave at around 2pm.

If you are planning for the Future I would go 10Gb - or at least have switches that can easily be upgraded to 10gb. If running fiber - make sure it can run at 10gb etc. the physical cables will probably last longer than the switches so its often key to get those right first time round.

Linksys is aimed at the consume rather then the business market. Meraki is aimed at the Business mid sized business - not only are they just a wireless manufacturer the security appliances abilitys are pretty god damn impressive (auto configured site to site VPN being one). I did my POC with a client yesterday who has an MX80 in the datacenter, the remote workers simple get sent a Z1 and once setup on the console it automatically configures a VPN tunnel direct with the MX80 appliance, with it being dynamic and auto-discovered it removes the need to have Static addresses and we are hopefully going to be removing the need for an Expensive MPLS circuit. I just hope it stays the same!! Also the kit looks super Cool

TBF Flip was never run into the ground - they just got to the point where they didn't want it anymore (it was profitable and worked) and nobody wanted to buy it! Meraki will be called "Cisco's Cloud Networking Group" under the current form. The guys who started the company are still involved so will hopefully steer it in a way that doesn't ruin the products.

Hopefully not - As its brilliant kit and for once its something that "Just works" - well most of the time

Well the Proof of concept worked flawlessly Clients love the idea and are considering using this instead of the MPLS circuit saving around 10-15k in year 1 and further savings years 2/3!!

This went through yesterday - Meraki is now officially Cisco and I'm growing to love it more and more!! Cisco Completes Acquisition of Meraki - The Network: Cisco's Technology News Site

I had that at my last place - we asked them to then only allow it to the set range of IP's and they accepted that - therefore normal traffic to a website is blocked but allowed to Meraki. (in that case it wasn't meraki it was another company). But yes well worth considering.

See post above re proxy - you can control the firmware if and when deployed from controller. My main point not nessicsrily meraki's cloud controller but a virtual controller - something which doesnt require you to spend 5-10k on a physical device but a vmware image etc.

Yes two ports to a range of ips - outbound only.

Yes with meraki you have to pay for the support license for the cloud controller otherwise it doesnt work. The meraki ap's are configured to automatically talk to the cloud controller. On you network on the controller you insert the serial number and when the ap contacts it gets configured. With ruckus though is it not only the latest firmware the controller has rather than the latest available.again if they lose contact with the controller they carry on working. Some features that i havnt seen in other wireless systems which meraki has. 1. Auth by SMS (still in.beta) when a user connects they are asked.for.a username which texts them to allow.them to comnect. 2. SSID straight to vpn. The ability to have an ssid which vpns traffic straight back to your network. Ideal for small branch offices. The other benefits are thr security appliances and switches from the same console.

That - plus a virtual image tends to be licensed per ap rather then fixed costs for a physical one.

I think that is key, having a virtual/cloud controller IMHO is key to any wireless network these days, no point having a physical controller these days.

If you are considering Wireless vendors - then also consider Meraki - recently purchased by Cisco. I've been using the kit for the last 7-8 months at a variety of places with great success, The kit looks nice, performs well and the best part about it is that it essentially "just works". The configuration is all done from the web. Expanding is purely a case of inputting the serial number into the web-interface on the cloud controller and plugging it in.

Has anybody heard of these guys before? Or using here software? From the Webinar I've just listened to and sounds rather good in theory! Datto SIRIS Technical Webinar - YouTube

Growing Stronger! Out of interest which school are you at? PM - I've done work with a few of the schools up there!

You can easily expand the P2012FC but you need to take into consideration the age of the primary SAN along with its warranty status, no point spending 5/6k on additional storeage now if the Primary SAN is say 3/4 years old (you don't state what generation you P2000 is). Then IMHO its not worth expanding the san in that scenario, if its only a couple of years old then it could be.

Open-E - Doesn't use controllers as such as you install it onto hardware but will get you on the most bang for your buck and in terms of scale ability its brilliant.