think YOUR network is bad?

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Oct 10, 2003 9:26 pm

My school's network got hit with the msblast quite a while ago.

Guess what they are doing about it?

Nothing.

But they are planing to switch from novell to ms networking.

Brilliant huh?

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12330

Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Fri Oct 10, 2003 10:11 pm

My school actually chose Linux for its proxy server.

They like blocking "distracting" sites though.

They log everywhere we go. I hate that. I am obviously not going to surf for porn or anything like that, but I still don't like people knowing everywhere I go. Of course, I could bypass it if I really wanted to, but why? I go where I'm supposed to go. (Well, I try to go, but the horrible computers stop me a lot...)

I went to Mozilla.org. I'm just hoping that someone visits it after looking through the logs.

Novell? I haven't heard about that... Why are they making the switch? Are they at all familiar with *BSD or Linux?

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12331

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Oct 10, 2003 10:31 pm

No one in the region is novell certified. They don't even know how to run their own network.

I say the pay me so I can get a cource and cert, and pay me a salery and fix it all. Not sure if I'd be willing to travel to the other schools all the time, but I could at least get our school running on a decent network.

They also have blocked sites. And there's a message that says "enhancing your internet experience" and it asks for a password to enter, but there's not an actual password, it just means it's blocked. They even block sites like dictionary.com and such. They block download.com, but now cnet.com go figure.

People download games all the time, it's ennoying since when I'm doing my interpendant study course people come in and play loud games and such.

This week end I might write a quick install app that I will have to execute every day on the computers around me, and if someone goes and plays a game, I'll connect to it and shut down the game. It will be sort of like a trojan but won't make a big mess, it will simply run in the back ground, and at my end I'll be able to telnet to it or whatever and bang. If I can make it list all the running processes it will be great, as if I see the one that looks like the game they are playing, I'll type it up and close it. Or I can just make it so it shuts down the computer.

We have a program called deep freeze, and when you reboot, the computer is automaticly how it was before, so it would force them to reinstall the game.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12332

ladytech · Post by **ladytech** » Sat Oct 11, 2003 11:21 am

There are 5 certified Novell CNA's in the Timmins region that I know about (I trained 3 of them) and I have been told that there are others in the area. There are also a couple of CNE's. Not only do I train Novell but we are also a Novell Certified partner. So please don't say there are no Novell Certified people in the region.

The problem is not a lack of certified or trained technicians it all comes down to budget. They can't afford the IT staff they really need because of provincial cutbacks.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12342

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Oct 11, 2003 1:30 pm

Hmm interesting. The school said there's no one certified... I guess it's the easy way of saying they can't afford it. But in general what we need is one technician per school. And maybe one that does all of them who can better understand the WAN and how it's configured etc... But all schools can run interpendent networks hooked up to a main one, that's sort of how it is right now. Local servers, then the main server / router where the T1 internet comes in. It's in North Bay. Saw the circuit diagram for the network, it's not bad of a network actually, we just need people to maintain it.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12343

ladytech · Post by **ladytech** » Sat Oct 11, 2003 2:36 pm

Your school board and three others need exactly what you have said. I've trained people working at all four school boards and all of them have the same complaints, "not enough people and no budget to hire any". They are stretched pretty thin and when you don't have the staff you can't properly maintain a network let alone improve on it.

As for none in the region I don't really think they have looked that hard. I've never seen an ad in any of the papers asking for techs with a CNA. Plus the school board, as you know covers a huge region in northern Ontario from North Bay up so you figure if they really wanted to find one they would be able to.

Thank the government for the size of the board area. Lets just hope that with the recent change in government the new Premier keeps his promise and allocates more funding for the schools.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12346

ladytech · Post by **ladytech** » Sat Oct 11, 2003 2:41 pm

As an after thought, fewer and fewer people are asking for Novell training. (actually no one has inquired about it in 2 years) I do believe the Novell server systems are a dying breed. The schools must realize this and have been sending me some of their techs for retraining in Windows 2000 and 2003 server systems in the past year. Plus they also have to follow government mandates so things are never as simple as they seem.

Again lets hope that things change. If they don't then find a way to change them after all the youth is the future of any country. Make note of whats wrong now and when you are in a position to do so, fix it.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12347

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Oct 11, 2003 2:47 pm

Yeah in a way it may be better to go with a Windows 200x server as it's probably easier to maintain and it's more used but the danger is viruses and worms. But the actual network is just a protocol and all it does is carry the data, so I assume novell can as easly get hit with worms (like we just did) then windows, but the thing is, the virus is still somewhat contained right now, there's lot of problems but there's no data loss or anything ... so far.

Even going Unix/Linux based would be a good idea. They could have a red hat server and run dhcp, iptables etc... for better security. They could use samba for the network drives.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12348

ladytech · Post by **ladytech** » Sat Oct 11, 2003 2:54 pm

All good ideas.

As for the blaster worm. Had their firewalls been set up right it (the original version) would have never gotten into the network unless a student brought it in on disk or cd). Also if their machines had all been up to date on patches it would not have been a problem. Most virii cause trouble in networks that are not properly maintained and kept up to date.

Novell servers allow them to push updates to all the clients so updating would not have been a difficult procedure. As for removing it, it should have been gone from the systems within a few days, not the length of time that it seems to have taken. Mind you there are several new versions of blaster and one of them seems to have found it's way in through firewalls.

In general when I am building or reloading a system with XP/2000 nowadays the patch is applied before the machine is even connected to the internet (I have them downloaded on cd for that purpose) If it is not applied before an NT based machine connects to the internet then the machine is usually infected within 15 mins.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1443, old post ID:12349