BaronVonSchtuk

Thanks for the suggestions, I will dig a bit deeper and see what I can see. It would be nice to finally figure out this rather annoying issue! Cheers!

> we used to have this problem. We traced it to a bit of 3rd party software we were using for intenet monotoriing NetIntelligence. If that couldnt talk to the internet, it would stuff up the machines. I suppose that could also be our problem, but this problem has been going on for more than a year and just recently (a month ago) we moved to a new facility. During the move, I rebuilt the entire system from scratch and changed most of our software and it is still happening. I am more ready to blame myself for a misconfiguration somewhere than on a 3rd party piece of software, but you never know. > Have you tried with each dc pointing to the other for its primary dns? I have not tried, but this was also happening when I had only one DC. I will try and see what happens.

Client DHCP settings point to the two DC's (both static addresses, 10.0.0.3 and 10.0.0.4) The NIC's on the servers DNS are each set to loopback (127.0.0.1)

So here is the situation: I run a smallish school network (~75 computers, ~150 users) and I have come across a very strange problem. When the internet connection is lost (due to any number of reasons from crappy service from the ISP to cleaning ladies knocking a cord loose) my domain logons take an extraordinary amount of time (5-10min) to complete. This *only* happens when the internet is off. As long as the internet connection is good, logons are processed in a matter of seconds. The setup: 2 x Windows 2003 R2 x64 Domain Controllers both running DNS 1 x Windows ISA 2006 running DHCP Clients all run Windows XP SP3 Pro. About half the users have mandatory profiles with redirection and half use regular roaming profiles. Both types are affected by this problem. Until recently I was using only one DC that provided both DNS and DHCP services and a firewall (PfSense) out front. Same problems then. My DNS servers are set to forward to the google DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) because after much testing, I get much snappier results then by going with my ISP's DNS servers. That being said, I have the same problem when using my ISP's DNS servers. Ok, I am sure I left out some important details that some nice chap will point out for me, but I am hoping someone with a big brain will be able to tell me what stupid mistake I have made here cause this has been bugging me for almost a year now! Cheers!

Soooo, the students get the lollypop sticks, but I get the lollypops, right? I like where this is going. Maybe we could instead use empty beer bottles! You know, get some green glass beer bottles and some amber glass beer bottles and give those to the kids to signal 'all is well' or 'trouble'. Of course, we would have to empty the beer bottles first.... and knowing kids, the bottles would get lost all the time and so we would need a constant supply of bottles. All in the name of education! I have used both Lanschool and NetOp School in the past. They are both great products and students have a variety of was of communicating with the teacher (me) through them, but I am the type of teacher that is constantly walking around in the lab while I am teaching. I rarely sit at my desk during class time so any digital solution will not really address the current problem. What I really need is an obvious (largish), fun, easy to see solution that students can use to signal their need for assistance, without disturbing their work-flow as more times than not a student can continue to work on other things until I can get to them, but not if they have to sit there with their hand in the air. We are also talking about students ranging from 5 years old up to 18 years old so something easy enough for the little ones but not too cheesy for the big ones. Now, about those beer bottles...

Sorta like a mid-tech (LED's don't count as high-tech... right) dunce caps? We could incorporate a NIA game controller into the headband of each one to read the thoughts of the students and light different LED's depending on the thoughts. All clear = green problems = red thinking about plagiarizing = amber pr0n = white? etc... Oh the fun we could have!

thanks laserblazer for the suggestion(s). Colored cups would be a solution and it may turn out that I go with something like that, but I am hoping someone will come up with a fun, exciting, creative, and educational way to accomplish the goal. (for example, using USB powered LED lights can lead into discussions about USB, about LED's, and all sorts of other creative tech-related topics). With my listed conditions, I may be dreaming too big and a nice low-tech solution like you pointed out may be the only reasonable solution. We shall see.

Good morning all, I am looking for ideas on how to implement some kind of attention getting device for students to use instead of raising their hands... I run a small school network at an international school in Armenia (around 70 computers with associated peripheral devices) and also teach the technology classes. I find myself constantly running back and forth in my lab, bouncing from one raised hand to the next and have found over the years, and not surprisingly, kids don't sit very patiently with their hands in the air for very long. My idea is to create some kind of device to place on top of their computers (the towers sit on top of the desks, next to the monitors) that they can use to signal that they need assistance, but that does not also prevent them from continuing to work, as keeping your hand in the air tends to do. Something as simple as a flag they can place on top of the tower, or a small light bulb (maybe LED or USB powered ...) with an on/off switch, would accomplish the job, but I was hoping that somebody would have a more interesting suggestion. Conditions: 1.) Dirt cheap and/or able to be built by a weekend warrior type of handy-man (me!) 2.) Materials must be very common due to the fact that I have a hard time purchasing goods from the US or UK (remember, I am in an international school) so everything must be available locally. 3.) Durable!!! I look forward to seeing what the collective minds of edugeek can come up with... Cheers!