Gaz

Yep IE10 and Server 2003 dont play well. For IE10 the "internet explorer maintenance" in GPMC doesn't work anymore and you need to use GPP So either Server 2008 R2 and above. I'm not even sure if the GPP work around thing will work as thats for XP clients.

I was also quoted laser a long time ago but they can be affected by weather quite a lot and given the amount of rain/fog/snow we get around here it wasn't really viable.

I Think airfiber is still the way to go, but I shall definately take on board keeping the current infrastructure and just routing some traffic between the link such as server syncing. We have around 80 endpoints between the two buildings.

Isn't that true for any point to point link even ethernet or fiber optic cable? Would a site/domain trust be better over the wifi link? keeping 2 internet connections and also 2 content filters? I'm not even sure how that would work. I'd still need two DCs. I'm just trying to reduce the amount of network devices's actually needed.

As it currently stands I have two buildings each with distinct networks. What I want to do is merge both networks into one network. Building A will host the internet connection, servers, content filter and half our clients Building B will host the other half of the clients. Building B will have a switch connected to the wifi for all the clients. This is an area I don't have a lot of experience in but I'm just going on the basis that more speed = faster network connectivity. The internet (fiber optic) will also be carried across this link. This would allow us to drop one of our internet connections and servers while cutting the management of two networks in half. Providing this idea I have in my head works like I think it should.

Excellent thanks. I did a quick google but my googlefu isn't great today. At 2.7K thats a realistic option for us. Problem is the buildings are only about 150-200 meters away from each other and as code9ster said there may be problems with such a short distance.

Have you any experience of it @plexer ? I'm planning for the future and this looks like a great within budget gigabit wireless link. Does anyone know of any UK suppliers?

Go for the 2GB model its only a few quid more and it will be able to handle larger textures better.

Drayteks firewall is very complicated so good luck with that. For VPN they do have some good guides which I've used with some success. VPN - DrayTek Corp

Yeah I realised after I had posted that why on earth didn't I just apply an auth exception for the Email category.

I wouldnt bother with a quadro for a media editing PC it would be a waste of money. An nVidia 650Ti would be a well rounded card and should play most games on at least medium settings. What games will they be playing? We have Quadro 600s in our CAD CAM PCs and on a basic model there was no performance difference between that and the on chip CPU gfx (Intel Xeon E1225 P3000 gfx) Its only on more complicated models with multiple parts on the screen that you will see the performance benifits, so it all depends on how complex the editing is that they are doing.

Thanks all. The sub domains don't really matter as smoothwall will just block all subdomains. I'll add in the others. Why do they have to use so many domains! Yes I remember the days when hotmail used to use IP's which was a nightmare because I blocked web access via IP's because they students could get around our old webfilter like that.

Thats just for the outlook website on the internet! we don't use outlook, just the students insist on using poor email providers.

I've added a few domains for outlook/hotmail/live etc etc for them to be allowed. But today I have just had to add another one afx.ms to allow attachments to download correctly. Currently ive got. a.gfx.ms hotmail.co.uk hotmail.com afx.ms outlook.com live.com gfx.ms Are there any more???

I cant speak for my students, but I like being able to search for an image of an exact size in pixel dimensions. I'd also prefer it if when clicking on a thumbnail image in the search results, I just want to see a larger image, not go to the website page. 90% of the time I just want to see a larger view of the image to see if its suitable. Other than that I think its great you provide a pre filtered image search for people to use.

I've tested it at home and its pretty clean but its far from google images in terms of user experience.

Just booked my ticket for my first time attending. If anyone would like a lift from the hotel let me know as its on my way. Looking forward to the 3D printing and Smoothwall speakers.

Were your switches second hand? Ours came with a manual clearly stating that the switch was factory configured with the IP address 192.168.1.254 so all I had to do was connect the switch to a PC on that range and login and change it. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/csbms/sf30x_sg30x/administration_guide/78-19308-01.pdf Cisco Small Business 300 Series Managed Switches Command References - Cisco Systems

Anything will do really. Whats your budget? do you need a certified laptop? Windows 7 pro is a must for Solidworks 2013 as XP is no longer supported. I'd recommend an i7 processor 8GB ram and an SSD with mid to high end gfx. Just depends on how complex your models are and how many parts you'll have on screen.

Is the NIC not coming back on when power is restored? Perhaps a BIOS update is in order? Could there be an issue with using USB adapters?

You can also config the switch via SSH, Telnet and serial connection. If you want to enable Layer3 you will need to use Telnet to enable it.

We have been toying with the idea of buying or leasing a 3D printer for rapid prototyping on our CAD/CAM Courses Does anyone know of any brands to go for or avoid? We would like something compact but reliable and ideally not too expensive and single colour is fine.

Its a UTAX, which is bascially a Kyocera. It was worth updating the drivers because they have a nicer layout for selecting sorting and duplexing etc etc.

Take the SSD out and put your old HDD back in and see if the problem persists. If it does then the SSD is somehow at fault.

Well the basic print function worked with the old driver but it looks like in this version you can also send jobs to the printer for storage so they can be printed later. While you could do this with the old copier it was only when you were locally at the printer not remotely from a computer.