AngryITGuy

Since our ISP decided to block You Tube here I have been asked by both the PE and Music departments to find sites where they can play/stream music from. I wanted to check to see what sites if any others are using in their schools and share the site we are using here. We initially tried the Yahoo Music site but staff didn't like the stupid adverts that play before each track, so I managed to find this which looks really good, so I thought it might be of interest to some of you. Even on our poor excuse of a broadband connection the speed at which it can play a track is impressive to say the least and there are no stupid adverts either. The other neat trick is that unlike the Yahoo Music and other sites I have tried this one downloads a copy of the file to your Temporaty Internet Files folder for you to enjoy later which is an added bonus I think

Hope this is helpful... When I had the demo for InQuizitor I was informed that all the content is curriculum approved. Were were also told that all site licenses for InQuizitor included £500 worth of content, Prices for content are dependant on the number of questions supplied and range between 8 and £40. The bonus of InQuizitor is that you are able to create your own content so there are no ongoing licensing costs, unless you purchase the home licence for students. Its also simple to use as the Editor for creating content is very intuitive, exactly what you need if teachers are going to be using it Here we will have InQuizitor installed on all curriculum machiens with the all content on a server. The content will also be available to download via our VLE so students can download and access the content from home.

InQuizitor is free to download and trial. I believe you have to request an online demo for I Am learning. In my opinion these game based learning/teaching programs are the way forward as they use a method of interaction that students these days are very use to. It can change the way a subject can be taught and students are far more engaged as playing games is something most if not all of them are good at.

We recently had a demo of InQuizitor which we were very impressed with see here for more info Similar to I Am Learning its a Game Based revision tool and after looking at the costs involved its about half the price too. Haven't seen both products in action so I can't say which is better in my opinion but I have just requested a demo of I Am Learning.

We have BLOXX installed here and I have to say we are very pleased with the system. We did look at all the other solutions out there but prefered the functionality of BLOXX. The web filter is also really impressive as is the TRUE-VIEW technology which in our experience can correctly categorise a website about 8 out of 10 times. Anonymous proxies here are a thing of the past as BLOXX is very reliable when it comes to blocking these. The only criticism I have with the unit is that its very L-O-U-D If you have any other questions regarding BLOXX just ask and I will try to answer them as best I can.

I agree with siuko the filtering is very hit and miss. If you want to see for yourself select strict filtering from within the SafeSearch Filtering options. Then search for "adriana sage" even with strict safe search the images on page three of the search should not be seen within a school environment. We found this out during the summer as during the testing of our new web filter. It seems Google thinks hardcore images are ok to be seen even with safe search enabled it does happen with a lot of other image searches too.

@ FragglePete thanks for the advice I tried everything you suggested and we still kept getting the ip address conflicts. @ Ric_ the server has ip conflict detection turned on. After checkong through the event logs of some of the machines with the I found the MAC Addresses of the two workstations causing the problem. Turns out its NICs on two servers we setup at the beginning of the year. I'm surprised to say the least that they have just decided to act up considering there have been no changes made to the servers since they were installed. Both the servers are Dells fitted with 2 Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit cards with the latest drivers The cards are confgured to work as a 802.3ad Link Aggregation team with a static address. I removed the team to allow the cards to pick up a DHCP address this was then released, i flushed the DNS and cleared the ARP cache and then reconfigured the team. However workstations are still coming up with the ip address conflict message and the ip address in conflict is different each time! I am going to delete the teams and use the network card on each server that is not causing the conflict to see if that helps. Has anyone come accross any issues like this before?

@ budgester thanks for that I will give it ago. I know all signs point to a rogue dhcp server. However when I run ipconfig /all on a laptop that displays the conflict message the dhcp server is set to the site dhco server and nothing else. I may even stop the dhcp servce later and see if a ip renewal picks up anything but in the meantime I will give wireshark a go.

@ kmount have tried that and still no joy!!! @ penfold we did have that issue where pinging by name and ip gave two different results. Found that to be down to DNS pointer files where the same ip address was referenced to by two machines. There are no duplicate entries for ip address in dhcp just bad addresses. Pinging a bad address from within dhcp gets a reply back from a functioning machine which does not display the ip address conflict message. @ rhyds there are no other working DHCP servers on site, this has been checked a few times to make sure nothing was missed out. @ tosh74 the machines with the ip address conflict do not have the same address. I have even checked the registry on two laptops with the problem to see if there are any references to a common ip addresses there weren't the only ip address in the registry were the ones assigned to the NIC and WIFI card and all were different. I am starting to think the problem is down to the server rather than clients buu there is still no light at the end of this tunnel for ME!

Right this problem started the first day back of the new academic year and is starting to get annoying as all attempts to resolve this have failed. The school DHCP server is running 2003 R2 with service pack 1 and has never given us any problems at all. The same server is also set up as one of the DNS servers for the site. Over the summer all workstations had XP SP3 installed, I held off for as long as possible whilst it was being tested on the network. Also over the summer we had a managed wireless network installed using Cisco hardware. One the first day back it was staff laptops that started to get an ip address conflict error when logging on to the domain using wireless connectivity. We thought this was down to the fact that our Cisco Ap's were given DHCP addresses, these were all changed to static addresses but did not resolve the issue. Later in the week it started to affect workstations in the ICT Suites, so the theory of the wireless causing the issues has been thrown out the window. A script was written to release the assigned ip address and restart the workstation to resolve the issue but this only works for a day when the laptop logs on the following day the ip address conflict message appears again. We have also changed the ip address range used for distribution and bizarrely this has not fixed the issue as some of the clients are still connecting with their old dhcp addresses assigned last week. However I think this maybe down to the fact that the lease for last weeks addresses expires on Wednesday, so the clients should pick up an address from the new distributed range then. The only thing I can think of now is that the DHCP database is corrupt as that’s the only possible cause of the problems. I would really appreciate some advice on this as its driving me nuts and I have almost gone through all the possible causes of the problem and nothing has resolved the issue. HELP PLEASE!

Having just been let down by my current supplier I am looking to purchase a Cisco Wireless 4402 Controller in particular the 25-K9 version. Can someone recommend a supplier for me please, the last supplier can no longer honour the quoted price and is now asking for a significant hike in price. Many thanks.

My Macs would be last things on that list I would get rid of if I had to. They probably get the most use of all my kit at home.

With two kids under three I never seem to get time to use most of the kit I have at home, that plus the fact that I had to move all my kit into the loft to make way for a nursery. Kit at home includes the following: HP Proliant ML110 server running 2003 and a couple of VMs Two slim line media centre pcs in the two living rooms A Macbook, Macbook Pro and iMac Toshiba laptop Eee PC 701 and 901 Advent and HP desktops 1TB NAS with a 1TB external USB drive for backups PS3 360 Elite Wii Netgear switch D Link MIMO wirelss router HP 2600n HP 2015dn Was lucky enough to redecorate the new place before we moved in so I was able to run cables to all the rooms to make sure they all had network connectivity. Looking through the list above and struggling to remember the last time I used most of the kit I would say it was possibly time to downsize

I see wil have to get on to our ISP and request an external IP address, our internet access is provided by the LA here. Thanks

Right I am looking to install and run ipcop, packetfence or possibly both on out school during the summer it just depends on how much time I have to test and configure both. I am in the process of setting up ipcop on a pc we have lying around the office, it has two cards on for RED and GREEN interfaces. I am just struggling to assign an address to each of the interfaces, I understand that to route properly the addresses have to be on separate subnets. The school ip addresses are setup as follows 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.254 used for gateway, servers, switches etc 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.9.254 used for dhcp I guess for the GREEN interface a reserved dhcp would be the way to go, its the RED interface I am having issues with. Should the RED interface have an address from the 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.254 range? I am concerned that if ipcop thinks this is the external network will there be any issues regarding traffic between the servers and the clients? I assume with the web interface of ipcop rules for traffic can be configured but I am not conviced this is the right way to go. Would it be wise to change the dhcp scope and have a subnet assigned just to the gateway, proxy and ipcop for use on the RED interface? Is there actually a problem here or am I just over thinking this any advice would be gratefully appreciated

I see ..... sneaky yet clever

I see, the £310 price I think was from Misco, I have just checked the HP site again from the promotion and it states its only available from a ProCurve Reseller, hope you manage to get your switches using the promotion.

Same here although I think I may have paid more for mine. I still use it now as it has a switch on the side which lets me use it as a floppy disk when the odd occasion requires one.

@plexer did you know about the 3 for 2 promotion HP are currently running on the 2610 range. Have just ordered 4 of these switches and thanks to the promotion will be getting 6 instead. Details can be found here Out of curiosity how much did you pay for them? There seems to be a big difference in prices. Have seen prices for the 48 port 2610 range from as much as £455 ex VAT down to £310 ex VAT!

Having got myself a shiny new 1080p TV, I am now looking for a HD solution for movies. With the cost of the Blu-ray players at the moment I think the obvious choice would be a PS3 as its a console, Blu-ray player and I think a web browser too. I for one would probably never use the console side of the PS3 as I have a Wii and 360 which I don't get time to play as it is. So its primary and dare I say sole use would be as a HD player, although MGS4 may change my mind. Has anyone used their PS3 as a Blue-ray player is the quality any good? Is the actual drive noisy? My 360 Elite can on occasions get quite lound which is annoying to say the least! Thanks

KS3 Students - 150MB KS4 Students - 300MB Staff were unlimited but a quota of 5GB per user will be in place come September following one user who has over 40GB of data! (24GB on Home Directory and 16GB thats right I said 16GB on her profile!)

Is anyone out there running a Trapeze wireless network? We are looking at a managed wireless solution and have already had a quote for some Cisco Kit (It was for 40 1130AG and a Cisco 4402 Wireless Controller). Just had someone on site who only deal with Trapeze equipment from what I got told it sounds great but I still have some reservations which I guess is because I fear the unknown..... Any advice or comments regarding the Trapeze kit would be much appreciated. Thanks ps...You will have to excuse the following rant but these people know who they are To those individuals who are currently taking great pleasure in monitoring my activity on edugeek I have two things to say to you: 1. and do some bloody work! 2. YOU CAN'T SILENCE ME!

@ Sylv3r - we are also getting some Q1s as part of the CfP Incentive with the LA here. In total we are getting 85 of them! Have had one on site to test and share many of the opinions shown here its S-L-O-W and fiddly to use. You can't get the thing in a comfortable position to use the attached keyboard so that it pretty much dead weight! I can see the stylus for each device going missing or being used as a weapon by the students! Just wished the LA had picked a better device or at least give schools an option of devices I also wished I was told the school was responsible for the support before the school placed the order!

Thanks for the numerous and helpful posts people. Perhaps some background info would help shed more light on my situation. I have not been at my current position long, network manager before me left before he was sacked. As far as I can tell there was no staff AUP, well not one staff have to sign. I have just finished putting one together. The policy is pretty basic in its structure and is similar to many posted on here. It tells staff that all internet and email traffic will be monitored and that the user’s history will only be looked through in detail should the school/SMT receive a complaint about a member of staff from a student/visitor/other member of staff. Just to cover my back it even goes on to say that when the report regarding the use history is created a member of the SMT has to be present and the generation of the report has to be documented. I have tried to make it as transparent as I can to show staff I have no intention of checking up on them just for the sake of it as I have more important things to do with my time. Sent it out to staff for comments and most have come back and said they will refuse to sign it and they have threatened to go to the union regarding the changes being introduced. Staff here pretty much run the show, they install what they want, store what they want and surf the internet when they want looking at what they want. We have recently had BLOXX installed which will filter and monitor staff internet access from September, this was not received well by staff. Staff have a home directory, a department directory for documents and a department directory for media resources yet most people just save everything to either their home directory or desktop. This is problem is down to staff training and I hope to get this resolved with some training sessions to staff. For those of you who asked LimeWire was already running before I started and breaking the habit has been difficult, although BLOXX should put an end to that. Webmail has been blocked as staff have access to our internal exchange server. The network since I have been here has been taken down twice by a virus once during OFSTED, both were "inadvertently" downloaded from webmail by staff. I am currently the bad guy at school as I dare to tell staff what they can and can't do and I dare to introduce change. Staff have pretty much stopped talking to me since I told them their internet access will be monitored, but I don't care the place needs policies putting in place and the staff need to be reigned in. Staff have even gone to the extreme of not using the exchange server as there is a rumor doing the rounds that I have been instructed by the SMT to read all emails sent by all staff. I guess it’s true what they say about POWER IN NUMBERS and all that I am not sure what the SMT will be forced to do if all staff refuse to use the internal exchange and refuse to sign the new AUP. Sorry about the RANT but its late and it's not long before I have to be up again to go and face the mob.

22 Updates here this morning. As previously mentioned 8 for IE7 in Latvian, Estonian and Bulgarian. And 3 security updates for IE8 which isn't even installed on the network. Have just checked the settings on the server and its definatly set to download updates in ENGLISH only! Very strange......