[PLUG] A Small K-8 LAN - Bascom?
AthlonRob
AthlonRob at axpr.net
Sat Sep 4 18:15:03 UTC 2004
On Sun, 2004-09-05 at 00:52 +0000, Aaron Burt wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 03:46:03PM -0700, AthlonRob wrote:
> > I inherited a network at a small K8 private school (5 classrooms, 5
> > teachers) and have run in to some issues. At the moment, I'm on orders,
> > so am only really available to talk to individuals over the phone after
> > normal business hours.
>
> ???
AF Reserves. I'm busy during the work day and can't get on the phone
during Bascom's tech support hours (they close at 3PM our time). I
should have explained that better. :-)
> > Their network consists of approximately 50 Windows 98 computers and a
> > server. They just upgraded from 56K dialup to DSL yesterday. All the
> > systems plug in to a single 10BaseT hub.
>
> That's gotta be one big mutha' of a hub.
Yeah, it is.
> > The systems then access the Internet through an old server running
> > 'Bascom'. nmap identified it as Linux-based. It's running 2.4.20 or
> > so. I haven't yet booted with a rescue CD to attempt to identify the
> > underlying distribution.
>
> http://www.bascom.com/about/aboutbascom.shtml
> "BASCOM Global Internet Services, Inc. is a software development
> company specializing in curriculum-based Internet management and
> Internet infrastructure solutions. BASCOM has made its technology
> available to K-12 schools, community-based organizations, and libraries
> using an approach that permits simple, affordable, and low-maintenance
> deployment."
Yup. Of course, that doesn't actually tell us what it does so much.
I think I'll contact the teachers and find out if they even know the
software is there. If not, it's gone...
> > It isn't working. Packets are filtered through the box, utilizing some
> > bridge/firewall software I'm not familiar with. Currently web access
> > absolutely crawls - the box is, simply put, lagging.
>
> If this is something you've been charged with fixing, I'd recommend you
> start out by replacing it with IPCop. Quickly installs to HDD from CD,
> a basic red/green setup will get folks going and you can fine-tune it
> from a web browser on the green (inside) network.
>
> The IPCop box will tide you over 'til you make your way-cool Super Custom
> Extra-Nifty firewall. You can even install DansGuardian on it to
> protect the kiddies from Nasty Stuff.
I haven't had any experience with IPCop, so will probably utilize a nice
Slackware install with my iptables script and squid/squidguard or
DansGuardian to filter stuff out. Either that or I'll talk them in to
spending $50 on a cheapo DSL router.
> > On another note, due to the age of so many of the systems and there
> > inherent issues (I did help clean up a virus about two years ago on
> > their LAN), I wonder if utilizing K12LTSP might be a worthwhile
> > endeavor. They don't currently have either the budget or the iron to
> > run K12LTSP on a single system, serving out to the whole LAN, so I
> > wonder if a more distributed solution might be in order...
>
> Would be a good thing to try as a pilot project, at least. At Free Geek
> Collaborative Technologies, we run a nice li'l LTSP box for our office
> and love it. You need about a GHz (or dual-500s) and 1+ GB RAM to get
> decent performance with 10s of terminals, but that's not a hard spec to
> meet. That's like, what, $200 at Fry's?
A gig of RAM alone will run you close to $200. The cheapest CPUs Fry's
have are all over $50. $10 for a HSF. $30 for a case (online, Fry's
doesn't have cheap cases), etc, etc... I'm currently building fairly
barebones systems for about $350 in hardware. Unfortunately I also must
pay the Microsoft tax on these systems. :-(
> Let me know if you wanna swing by some time and checkiddout. You're
> right, it'd be good to have at least a couple of servers so you're not
> totally dead in the water when a server dies.
I wonder how best to implement something like that with multiple
servers. I should play around with it a bit...
> > I'd love to replace MS Office on those systems with OpenOffice or
> > similar, but OO is *so* sluggish on modern systems I know these systems
> > wouldn't be able to handle it. They're all 32-64MB of RAM, Pentium or
> > Pentium II systems, none over 300MHz that I've seen.
>
> Perfect terminals, then. Ours are 200MHz. I'm surprised you haven't
> started losing them to disk failure, though.
Exactly; they're great terminals. They're not good for much else,
though. :-)
I'm surprised we haven't had a ton of disk failures, as well. Happily
surprised. Most of the systems were expensive workstations in their
day, though.
--
Rob | If not safe,
Jabber: athlonrob at axpr.net | one can never be free.
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