chaz6

If your LEA does not support it, you can get a tunnel service from JANET. Before I left, JANET were still deciding whether to make IPv6 support a requirement for the regional networks. That was not my experience, and we had 3 sites and not far off 100 VLANs.

Correction... 1 x Dell EMC AX100 1 X Dell EMC CX300

It was only three routers, and it wasn't doing any harm! Now I know who to blame

At my last place, I implemented it across all three campuses, as well as the wireless networks - including separate networks for local users and eduroam visitors. One notable site we served was the Harley Davidson European engineer training centre (that should give you a hint where I worked!). The organization is the only other apart from Cambridge University to have IPv6 glue records in the DNS zone .ac.uk. Sadly since I left, it seems that the IPv6 service has not been maintained as I can no longer ping the DMZ servers.

At my old place we originally deployed 3Com 7250s, working as "fat" APs before the Trapeze solution was available. Luckily, they are supported by the new system with a simple firmware change, with the constraint that MAP-to-switch encryption is not supported as those APs do not have the necessary hardware. The new system is a whole lot easier to manage than the old one, although the 3Com engineer did not want to touch the RF-planning aspect. I guess their engineers haven't been properly trained in it yet.

We deploy all printers (with the exception of some local printers - mainly for card printing) from a central print server using the group policy print deployment tools in 2003 R2. It has so far worked well for the most part. Like tech_guy the printer must be sought from the directory before printing. We often have problems when people hit print without selecting the printer, and the document goes to the default printer, which is "Microsoft Office Image Writer" because there is no facility to specify a default printer when using group policy printer deployment (imagine all the different combinations of printers that could potentially occur). Because the printers don't appear to the client until login, I do not know if it would be possible to apply a logon script to change the default printer. I shall need to experiment with this. I would much prefer a system where the print jobs are released to a printer rather than being printed out straight away, allowing the documents to be retrieved from anywhere in the college after being sent to print.

At our place, for new builds and anything more than a small job it goes out to tender. For the smaller jobs we use local contractors for copper and fibre, that carry all the necessary certifications.

One campus is a star, and the other is a bus, due to the way that the ducts have been laid. Workgroup switches are stacked, up to 8 units high with 48 ports per unit. I am working toward one distribution switch per building, but I doubt that the necessary ancillary works will be completed before I leave next year. The workgroup switches are arranged like this in cabinets for ease of maintenance and cabling:- http://tinyurl.com/2jkl7g At present the stacks have 1 or 2 gigabit connections to the distribution/core switches. The distribution switches are connected by 4 gigabit trunks, and are upgradable to 10gigabit. While we're on the subject, I have some fibre to dispose of. Single mode, multi mode, and combinations of the two, all suitable for ducting. If you are interested drop me a message.

Until the old domain is deprecated, we run two domains side-by-side on all the access networks (i.e. building vlans). All clients use the same dns and dhcp servers (ISC dhcpd and ISC named as opposed to Windows DHCP/DNS). This /would/ be a problem if ever you wanted to use RIS/WDS on both domains as you would then need to separate your clients (or do lots of horrible static configuration).

We use printer deployment extensively, but it has a couple of caveats. There is no way to specify the default printer (but then, how could you, and unfortunately at my place it is /far/ too difficult to have to actually decide which printer you want to use, instead of blindly hitting the print button). Secondly it does not seem to be supported by the print migration wizard. If you want to move your print server you'll have to go and update all those policies by hand (or script). Otherwise, it does a great job of silently installing drivers and adding the printers.

Two years ago we procured a SAN from Dell consisting of a Dell Poweredge chassis, a CX300 and a PowerVault 132T to run VMware VI3. We now have 7 blades - one running Server 2003 R2 as the VMware backup proxy, and 6 running ESX 3.0.2. We also have a Dell AX100 which servers home areas, shared areas, administrative installation points and a few other things.

Yep - only one in Europe! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/4552549.stm For the record, we put 3Com 3870 switches in there, but as yet there are no wireless points installed. However it is close enough that you should be able to pick up a signal from the adjacent building :-)

Glad to help! Please find it at the following url:- Green means "in use" Orange means "reserved" Yellow means "in use with multiple networks" (not good practice I know, I will consolidate them into one when it is quiet) Blue means "spans across wan"

VLAN's commonly serve two purposes. The first is to reduce broadcast traffic. The second is to separate devices by function or area. In my network there is a VLAN for each floor of each building, then VLANs for servers, facilities (cctv, etc), routing, telephones, virtual servers and wireless networks (staff, students and eduroam visitors). In most places the routing is performed by layer 3 switches (3Com 7700 and 3Com 5500) and there is also a router on a stick at each campus to do the IPv6 routing as our switches are not capable of doing this. If it is of any use I will upload my VLAN plan for all to see.

Here we use Exim, Spamassassin and Sophie (sophossavi) with a ruleset that is updated nightly. I get on average one spam a day now. Any false positives are usually due to badly configured servers. I had to admonish the EMA department of DFES because their system was sending out messages with the To: and Subject: headers replaced by "To :" and "Subject :" (not to mention the fact they were sending out passwords in plaintext!)