Reply inline.

On Thursday 29 January 2004 11:10 am, Quyen Arana wrote:
> What I need:
>
> I need all laptops connected into the network and able to readily
> access a Windows file share and access internet resources. There really
> is no time to configure new domain accounts on each laptop. I want the
> teachers to be able to walk in, plug in their laptops, and get to work.

So the people are able to log into their own laptops, and need to access the
internet and some sort of file share.

This is a two part problem:

For the file share, I'd recommend WebDAV. We've found that to work quite well
and we get good performance (somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-4 MBps). This
allows you to do whatever password scheme you want (including no password),
and tends to be quite cross-platform.

Depending on load, putting the file server on the inside of the network may or
may not be necessary. Not makes it easier, as you don't have to mess with
DNS.

For the internet access, there are two basic ways to do it:

First, the easy and annoying-to-IT way: get a hub and plug the uplink into a
wall jack. If Brad finds you, he'll beat the living daylights out of you, and
we'll all point and laugh.

As I have a strong interest in comedy and cheap entertainment, I highly
recommend this method.

Second, you could get some sort of box to masquerade the other boxes,
preferably either a Netgear mini-router, or some sort of Freenix (I helped
move an apartment of people using a cable modem from a Windows XP Server MASQ
box to a Debian MASQ box a while ago. There was a noticeable difference in
speed: ping times out of the network dropped by 20-30 ms, download rates
improved by 150 KBps from a near source, so it's not just my preferences
talking). If you have a computer around, SmoothWall
( http://www.smoothwall.org/ ) is a Linux distro especially for NAT boxes and
firewalls. It's quite nice, and easy to set up. Or so I've heard. I'd be
interested in hearing responses.

Alan