The Screaming Viking

We have been back to school for a week now and I’ve been pretty busy.  Over there summer there were a few changes that the instructors are going to need to get use to.  Generally, people struggle with changes, especially with things they don’t understand completely.  The biggest nightmare has been the printers…there is an interesting issue that is affecting virtually all the printers that I don’t quite have a handle on.  I’ve made an adjustment that should take care of the situation, but it’s going to mean that I’ll have to touch all the machines in the school…whoo hooo!

The wireless is working out well.  I’m using a certificate based authentication mechanism that, so far, is pretty smooth.  The only real issue I’ve run in to is if the time on the client is off by too much.  I’ve seen this on two machines.  I expect they ran out of juice and didn’t charge them for a day or so?  Dunno. Read the rest of this entry »

As I was working through the Ruckus wireless, I discovered something didn’t work quite the way I thought it would.  The dynamic-PSK didn’t take the users past the web sign on screen automatically.  Apparently that will keep coming up after a certain amount of time…tbh, I would love someone to explain exactly what the dynamic-psk does.  I’m going to need to read up on some docs.  The bottom line was the way I had been attacking the problem was not going to allow the users to sign on once and then be on for a year without having to re-authenticate.  I decided I needed to go with the 802.1x authentication mechanism with WPA2 encryption.  This is where my problems started to get pretty big…

I had mentioned before that this setup has a “zero-IT” option…this thing works very slick.  I had envisioned handing out the laptops to instructors during an in-service this fall and walk them through setting up their boxes.  You login to the registration screen, download an app…run it and you’re good to go.  This worked very well for the old setup I thought I was going to use…but not so well for this new config… Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer:  I’m by no means and expert on ruckus or networking in general…in fact general knowledge of networking protocols and topology is the biggest weakness in my technical background.  Having said that…below talks a bit about my experience and should be taken as the words of a guy still learning.

One of the my initial priorities at the school was setting up an “enterprise quality” wireless solution.  The previous guy had ordered laptops for all the teachers and with the consumer class wireless they were running it was a pain to have the users even try to get a wireless connection.  Each access point (AP) would be broadcasting a different wireless network…it was a bit of a mess.  I will say though that it was cheap, quick and got the job done.  I wanted to replace this asap…ideally, I wanted the wireless installed before the user’s had laptops (which is the way it worked out due to another issue that I will go in to later).  Part of the reason for that was to head off the questions and complaints about getting a weak signal and the other part was so I didn’t have to setup the machines for the wireless that was there, then go back and touch every machine again for the new install. Read the rest of this entry »

At the school the desktops in the labs are not too bad, but one of the big things that is holding the school back from embracing some of the neat technology coming down the pipe is our lack of an enterprise class wireless solution.  When I came into this job they had ordered laptops to be given out to all the teachers.  This is a good idea, but the next logical step is obviously a wireless infrastructure to make these devices truly mobile.

I priced out various wireless options, received some feedback from my peers and decided I would recommend Rukus wireless.  This has been deployed to various schools in the area and so far the people have been satisfied with it.  I compared their price to cisco gear and it was a bit cheaper…that coupled with the feedback I’d received from other people that have used Rukus heavily influenced my decision.  There is a reseller in the area that came to the school and conducted some tests for me to decide where to place the access points for the most comprehensive coverage.  They worked up a quote for me that was pretty on par with what another school had advised me their cost was.  I presented this information to my boss along with my “pitch” for why we should get this stuff.   Read the rest of this entry »