....and were in charge of future growth. what would you do? i know this is very vague but if you could just throw some ideas out.... here is what they have... ~150 clients including 3 labs (~25 comps in each) comps range from p1's to p4's. the only server is a pentium pro (ouch). they are running nt4 and a few 2k clients. they have a t1 line and the isp is some educational freebie. id be in charge of all future growth. is anyone out there in the education field? what kind of technologies are helpful? i dont even really know what else to ask....

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

Well a router and some subnetting for the different departments, and maybe a switch in each for a decent bit of bandwidth traffic control.

Perhaps a print server wouldn't go amiss, depending on the geography of the clients.

Perhaps also a program of moderisation to bring up the 'lesser' computers in line with the better ones. I would recommend PII 300 machines as minimum 'user' machines, and use the old ones for print servers, firewalls etc.

E-mail addresses for key people, for contact by each other or parents/pupils etc.

<b><font color=blue>~ What do you mean "It isn't working!"...Now where's my sonic screwdriver? ~ </font color=blue></b>

some good ideas..... i guess the students do not have email access, but they want the staff to have it. would i have to set up an exchange server? or just go through the isp...

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

the school I work in has centralized print servers, a double t-1, NT server setup some p-2's, p-3's and clients use win 95, 98 and xp they use sonicwall hardware to monitor "bad" sites and restrict access.. all clients have eudora on them for email( the kids have acct's too) it's not the best arrangement imo but we get by with it .. most of the teachers cannot change most of the settings\options on the clients ( I can but the admin hates me for it lol)

lagger

<b><font color=blue>Checking under my North<font color=red> AND</font color=red> South bridges for <font color=green>Trolls</font color=green></font color=blue>

sounds like one unsafe network you got there.....
first off....throw in a server or two running UNIX/Solaris or something similar.....
add in some a few clients running the same OS, you'll have a fast, efficient, and secure network....not to mention learning the OS(s) is very useful in the computer industry.

<b><font color=blue>Via chipsets, SiS chipsets -- all the same...all made in TAIWAN!

hey stick e... what is involved with setting up a unix/solaris server? how much for the os and what hardware modifications would i need to make.... what about clients. the network now is a mix of 98 and nt and 2k.

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

on a cost basis, you're much better off with Linux

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

School get software from Microsoft at very low price. The CS department in my school only paid 800 for all the Microsoft software we need. The license allow the department to install Microsoft server, Windows, Visual Studio, and other software on all the computer belong to CS department. The license also allow every students and facultys in the department to get a copy of the software. I think my school actually making money by charging students $5 for each CD. I get my Windows XP pro, Office XP, and Visual Studio .NET for $5 each.

like jlanka said, if you're on a budget you can get Linux or *BSD for very cheap and sometimes free.....
else, grab some of your department funds to buy a Sun Microsystem Licence(s)....you can get the OS for an Intel x86 CPU or for Sun's SPARC systems--they costs some, but Sun's Sparc systems would be ideal for a server(s). Check out Sun's products <A HREF="http://www.sun.com/products/" target="_new">here</A>.
For the server, lots of RAM is always good, CPU speed and Hard Disk space depend on how many clients you plan to inlcude in the network and what you plan on doing with them.
Clients are nothing special....can be anything from 486 to 2+ghz p4 and even Macs....using SAMBA, you can mix and match almost any OS to talk and work with each other in the network.

If I were you on a budget, I'd use either FreeBSD or OpenBSD as the server/firewall/router and install Linux on the clients....and just for the hardheaded and lazy peeps that don't want to learn a new OS, have a few clients with Windoze on them (it really doesn't matter what version, since they're all the same).


<b><font color=blue>Via chipsets, SiS chipsets -- all the same...all made in TAIWAN!

I was talking abou the cost difference between Linux and Solaris, not Linux and Microsoft.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>