dmj

As you've discovered, ICMP isn't the best method for monitoring: You are trying to measure availability of the service and using ICMP as a proxy to measure whether a port responds to an unrelated protocol. i.e. it's not a direct measurement of what you actually care about and uptime is not the same as availability. There could be a bunch of reasons why the ICMP fails intermittently, QoS? duplicate IP? routing issues? Firmware? STP convergence? or just that the network is loaded and dropping some ICMP. My advice would be to implement some SNMP checking for something that you actually need to monitor ( uptime, throughput etc) and not whether the your monitoring receives an ICMP response. The SNMP metrics might also give an insight as to why the ICMP is failing.

I guess question is if the current system is broken, will adding a new system to a broken network make the phone system less broken or more broken? I'd go for it, if it gets them them out of a hole at the cost of some call latency it's probably worth it, then you can come a long and be a hero by fixing it with the new network.

Not that I know of. Perhaps some of the consumer versions are smaller.

I'd recommend the Lenovo Yoga chromebooks. They're essentially laptops but you can flip the screen 180 deg and they turn into tablets.

With regards to 'mapping' networks I'm a strong believer these tools are not even close to best practice, at best they are a stepping stone so you can see what you need to automate. The picture alone isn't going to be a huge amount of help to diagnose, fix, recover from a failure or deploy changes. Anyway, once you've got the 'map', login to each network device and download it's configuration, from there you can use your preferred automation toolset to deploy configuration to your network equipment (and servers). The configuration is the real map - a single, backed up location with audit control over the entire estate.

Same school we once used a ferret with a string to get through a 20m cable run that would have been a pain to tear down. That worked out OK.

Running fibre 3ft inside a ceiling I drill a blind hole. Drill bit goes straight through the wall then through the ducting for the fume hoods. At this point I can crawl into the next section of roofing but can only just feel the hole in the fume hood ducting. Tech and I rig up a pvc disc and somehow glue it over the fume hood ducting. it pressure tested ok. The school has been demolished since that 'incident'. Nobody died.

I'd say that was a *lot* an m1 macbook uses 7w at idle. I'd guess at 34p/Kwh a 20w desktop would cost ((.34×24×365)/1000) * 20 = £60 per year to run at idle. Imagine if you had hundreds of them without shutting down!

It looks like there's going to be a new EU/US 'data flow' deal that would prevent the US spying on EU data, allowing the use of MS/Google data in the US again. I guess that would still be a technical GDPR violation in the UK as the UK isn't going to part of that - not that the ICO are ever going to come after anyone about it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-to-advance-its-data-flow-deal-after-u-s-makes-surveillance-changes-11670927692

Our system was that the finance office would do the ordering, We created a google sheet workflow with a plugin that would allow an authorised person/budget holder to sign of request so it would go: Tech/teacher etc gets quote and fills in form -> budget holder gets an email to authorise the purchase (link to a tick box on the form) -> finance get emailed a copy. Finance generate a PO number and send the order to the company.

Home assistant would integrate nicely with this: https://www.home-assistant.io/

You have to do both really, even LDAPS isn't really "secure" - once you've found a single LDAP login you get access to all the organisations LDAP data. The Google secure ldap is good implementation but nobody in their right mind would expose an active directory to the internet ldaps or not - a saml IDP is a good middleware to auth against them.

If you don't have an LDAP system setup you don't need to use it. If you already have a central store of user ID's there is a good chance it uses LDAP as a backend and will be compatible. eg: Okta , Google secure LDAP, MS Active Directory, FreeIPA, OpenLDAP are all identity providers that use LDAP as a backend. Bear in mind you need some extra security precautions to setup LDAP across the internet, so I wouldn't do it directly. MRBS -> SAML provider -> LDAP would be a better way and not use LDAP on MRBS at all.

I'd be inclined to do it through a calendar notification. Depends on what you are using for calendars and if you can force a notification on a single event (presumably you wouldn't want to force a notification for every timetabled lesson!). Calendar seems the most obvious solution for a timetabled event, which this is. Edit: you should be able to get your MIS manager to timetable it for the correct people, then it's out of your hands!

I've done this a bunch of times on linux/unix systems but not on windows. Usually so something can trigger when a file gets installed. I'm pretty sure it's going to be very similar on windows if you can get all the packages installed. fswatch /path/to/file/you/need/to/watch | xargs -n1 -I{} mail -s "file found" < emailcontent.txt [email protected] uses fswatch (which does support windows but you may need to compile the binary) https://github.com/emcrisostomo/fswatch

Network manager in schools is a bit of a misnomer IMO and IT manager would be a better description. My reasoning is that a Network manager should really manage network engineers - ie those that deal with Switches/Wifi/routers/cabling/firewalls/DNS/DHCP. An Infrastructure/Operations manager would deal engineers with server cloud/infrastructure and managing clients. Service desk manager would manage the first line support techs Clearly schools don't have the resources for all those teams so IT Manger / head of IT services etc is a better description for those that manage all the areas IMO. When I was in schools I was a 'network manager' and when I was working in a Uni I was a 'systems administrator' in an infrastructure/ops team but now I'm a lowly 'Site Reliability Engineer'. Seems the less 'management' I do the more I get paid

There's a bit more about why German lawyers say MS is in breach of GDPR here: https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/30/office_365_faces_more_gdpr/ Apparently MS changed the terms and conditions in Sept 2022 so that schoolchildrens telemetry data is processed by them - and that the US government has access to that data. That is a GDPR breach.

Don't remove the desktops until the laptops are upgraded to meet the spec you need? Decent monitors have all the docking built in these days, but USB-C

Those prices sound like they're a decade out of date Depends on the area but you should be able to pick up a 500mb/s fibre business package for £65 /month.

It was a while ago I looked into this, most of the consumer devices had issues with 802.11x auth. Raspberry pi worked well but these are hard to get hold of now. One option is setting up a dedicated hidden SSID for these devices. As for licensing I think you just need TV and ERA licenses for live news.

If it's been powered off for a long time there will be no electrons flowing to prevent internal corrosion. Corrosion will build up resistance in components significantly, that resistance will cause failure across a component. That's why electronics are packaged damp proofed with silica gel packets.

If it's a google school I was under the impression there are no adverts in youtube if they are embedded into classroom. If you have onsite DNS you can always hijack youtube.com and redirect it to a nocookie version.

for example: https://guacamole.apache.org/ (third party software, but free and easy to do)

Wonder if the impending ICO fine is more or less than the ransom the group were asking for?

The manufacturer/distributor must take them back, for free. It shouldn't be your problem.