CAWJames

Right, all sorted for the princely sum of £9.08 And oh my god, was it fiddly, keystones and not a lot of space to work with! Thanks for all the input on this. James p.s. Spot the single to double socket converter

Hi all, Just had a wondering. If i were to have a PC on a wireless network connected to work over a software VPN, and I were to plug a SIP phone via a crossover cable into the wired network card on the same PC, would the SIP phone be able to contact the VPN network? Wednesday afternoon musing! James

Cost isn't that much of an issue, the boss know there will be a cost involved, The dells are fine, I am just asking what else is good out there, from a portability and easy to get back point of view, all in ones, VESA mounted etc. The full 790 and 19" wide monitor, plus accessories isn't exactly easy to post back! Well neither would an all-in-one, but the easier they are to transport the easier it is to organize pick up. Thanks James

I did mean new machines! False economy not too really. All looked after via SCCM 2012 SP1 over VPN. Nothing wrong with the current 790's, just going to have more home people than I have spare PC's! So want recommendations on what to buy instead to make up the shortfall. Thanks James

Afternoon all, I am after some recommendations, we currently have a few distance learning tutors who work from home. We furnish them currently with a Optiplex 790, 19" wide screen and a headset. We are about to recruit some new people in this role, and I don't think I've got enough 790's in stock to fulfill the order. So...These computers are quite big and unwieldy(especially when being returned), I would be looking at an all in one or a small VESA mounted pc. Most they will be doing is Office, web work and a soft VOIP phone, so nothing too powerful needed, to be honest the 790's are overkill! What's good out there at the moment, people? Thanks James

Ah ha, yes you did, must have missed that! And its the same one. Good old ebay!! Thanks James Actually that's the cat5e version, i really want the cat6 one, which is still 23.99. I know there's not much difference, but i want everything to be at least rated cat6. Thanks for the pointer though.

They would do it, but £30 for a faceplate and modules! Bit steep, but lets me know it can be done, will no scour the CPC/Farnell website for the correct faceplate and modules, see how much I can get it for in bits! I am already crying about circa £40 per KEF in-ceiling speakers, need 6 of them, they were around £25 when I was pricing up this project! Thanks James

Thanks Shielder, that's perfect, just need to know the depth of the modules, will have to break out some google-fu and find out. James

There is the 6 module face plate I've used in the top right, but I would have to use keystone modules(which have more of a back than a nice full size module), and as my back boxes are only 25mm, it doesn't leave much room to terminate a cat6 cable in each one and make it fit, that particular 6 module faceplate is very flush! I will probably use the face plate like the top middle, which has a 'domed' 5 module face plate and use 3 double keystone modules and 2 blanks, hopefully this will give me a little more room for the module and cable in the back box. 4 runs to the tv(2 for hdmi sender, and 2 for tv and a.n.other), and 2 to the garage, take that wireless and red brick limitations! And in case anyone is wondering, the 5.1 plate is for my living room, and the array of 6 speaker terminals, is for speakers in my bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. 3 raspberry pi's running SqueezePlug clients, and a Oracle Linux 6.4 box in the garage providing the server. 3 Open frame Tripath TA202x units will provide amplification to each 'zone'. I have also constructed an Ikea Lack based unit to carry all the hifi, networking et al gubbins: LACK table(£5) and a lack coffee table on coasters(£25), cut to size and screwed together. The LACK range is mostly 19" wide, so you can see why its popular amongst home networking people.

In the end, I twisted each pos and neg together at the living room end, and then used 2 conductors in the main part of the tester to get a light, worked perfectly. My continuity tester is sitting on my desk at work, so once I worked out touching orange to orange/strip produced a light on the unit, everything else was plain sailing. Thanks all for the input This is the wall, rough fit, then a bit more paint and clean up the plaster: Now, how to fit 6 cat6 modules into a double box, hmmm.... James

Evening all, I'm redoing my house and have had all the speaker wires for my 5.1 run into the walls. I went to install the custom faceplate for the speaker terminals on the wall today, and realised I didn't know which wire was which(the electrician ran them and didn't label them). No problems I thought, I've got my trusty cat5 tester. So, I made a cable, tested the cable, cut the cable in half and isolated one conductor. This I thought would be perfect, attach the remote to a wire in the living room, and then touch the corresponding wire to each cable at the termination point, and I will get 1 light pop up when I get the right one! Sounded perfectly feasible to me. You may have guessed that this didn't work. Even if I connected it conductor to conductor, without the speaker wire, I got no lights. Am I missing something fundamental as to how these devices work? It is one of the cheapo remote and master jobbies with a rj45 and a rj11 connector on each unit. Someone please shed some light, if only to prove that simple still means complicated or that by cutting the wire, I let the magic smoke out Oh well, the old "one speaker, one ageing hifi" wire locating system it is for the time being! Thanks James

Sorry, should clarify the DR is at another location. So 4 centres, 4 leased lines, hence 4 firewalls. Thanks James

All very interesting. Now ive had some time to go through it, it would seem this time next year we will need 1 large device for the 100mbit, 1 medium device for the 10mbit(as it is a DR failover for the main site), and additionally 2 small devices for another 10mbit and a 4mbit EFM. I have managed to get them all to end at the same time, giving me some buying power! the other 2 devices are both at the moment, TZ210 SonicWalls, which are EOL soon enough anyway. So added to my list is a centralised management console, so I can add sites to the blockers etc in one place rather than 4 places! Would be bliss! Thanks for the input so far, and while the Palo Alto looks nice, it does seem on the steep end of things, does it have any extra functionality that warrants this/would enable me to sell it to SMT! James

Afternoon all, I am increasingly asked by staff if they can watch this and that, on iPlayer, 4oD, YouTube etc. We are not looking to record just simple use the odd video for educational in class use. What exactly do we need to be covered legally to do this? I have read the youtube terms and it doesn't mention education use anywhere I can find, and most references to the big channel on-demand services reference recording and not watching. Its all as clear as mud! Thanks James

While pFsense is fine for my home network, i would have great problems proving to SMT, that something i've cobbled together mysel matches up to a full paid for UTM appliance!! I know it can, but proving it to them is another matter! thanks for the replies, interesting so far. James

I forgot all about this thread, but thought I should post an update/solution. It turns out some berk was setting up a snmp solution, and rather than adding the IP of the server handling it all to just the snmp name, he locked down the switch just to that IP. Server was a test one on DHCP so IP changed, you can guess the rest... I'd rather not say who that complete fool was Suffice to say, null modem cable connected on the off chance, and a bit of digging fixed it!

Evening all, We currently run 2 watchguard firewalls, the XTM510 in both cases. One runs a 10Meg BT leased line and the other a 100MB BT leased line. Our current policy is to replace the firewall every 3 years, as it usually ends up being cheaper or a better deal to just buy new ones with 3 years full coverage than update the licencing on the old ones(or has the last 2 times). One X750e from the last refresh is currently being pfsensed and is going to run my home network Now I have more clout, I would like to move away from WG, as I find them clunky with sporadic updates, a major list of bugs(I think it was one of the earlier 11.x updates ran the firewall for around a minute and a half and then CPU hit 100% and it locked up completely, WG just said wait for the next update!) and I think they could do better in handling our traffic (probably not scientific, as it depends on the testing end too, but speedtest.net usually shows us at 80 ish meg down and half that up) Don't get me wrong, they do the job to the extent they work, but there must be better out there. What do people suggest for the size of our 2 lines? The 100meg one also hosts about 20 websites, including VLE(moodle 2.3)and other animals, and around 10 VPN's at any one time from home users, and 3 branch office full time VPN's. We aren't due to change till the end of this year, but I want time to investigate alternatives, so I can present my findings to SMT when the time comes. Oh and the emphasis is on security as much as throughput, application based with group targeting would be lovely, as there are a few students who manage to install spotify on completely locked down computers in our computer rooms! Thanks James

Oh well, will have to wait until she comes over for a meeting and organize it be swapped out then. Thanks for the info, I did try having a look for info like that on the dell website, but they do seem to hide these things well! James

Afternoon all, We have a user who lives in France, who has a laptop that has developed a keyboard problem(shift keys produces a \ and all kinds of weirdness, she spilt water "near" the laptop and swears none went on the keyboard, only user the laptop) We have added a USB keyboard and that works fine, and I have uninstalled the laptop keyboard and checked for any sticky keys, ease of access issues, and none were applied). We have NBD prosupport on this laptop, but I doubt they will send an engineer to france, or will they? any insight into the problem or exactly what prosupport will do would be appreciated. Thanks James

Or my latest one. That switch looks expensive, oh wait they seem to have added £300 to the price for a service which amounts to updating the firmware and programming a static address! One irate phone call later and a much more reasonable price switch is on the way. Moral of the story, look for 'value added services' on the quotes people! James

I believe its actually a bug in the 2.3 version, just seen https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-36192 Not liking the Closed, Wont fix status We cant move to 2.4 due to compatibility issues with some plugins. James

Hi all, We have Moodle 2.3, and MS have now pushed out IE10, which is nice, but we have a problem with the 'new' drag and drop. The first upload box you go to in a session shows the java applet perfectly, but every subsequent box just shows the round clocky spinny symbol and never loads the applet. Anyone have any idea? Thanks James

That makes sense, treat a netbook as a book, BUT we don't have a computerised library! So any simple check in, check out library systems anyone know about? Thanks James

Good morning all, I have an idea, but not quite sure how to execute it! We have a trolley of 30 netbooks, which students can rock up and borrow for the day. At the moment, they sign there name on a sheet against the netbook number. I would like to have a computerised booking system, where a student scans their student badge on a barcode reader, then scans the netbooks barcode, and at the end of the day, scans the netbook back in. This is mainly an exercise is making sure the little darlings wear their student badges!! No badge, no netbook, that'll learn 'em! Anybody done this? or have any suggestions to simple applications that do this already, or where I would start in rolling my own in Access, etc. Thanks James