Okay, this will be a bit of a longer post about mostly network policies and such (hey, talk about a nice 1st post :mrgreen: ), but I do need help with the software configuration. I'll be the first to admit that I know almost nothing about Netware, but I do know a lot about home networking and computers (troubleshooting broken PC's are fun for me :cool: ). Okay, so here I go:
At my local school, we have just started developing new Network Policies concerning the use of wireless devices and personal computers within the school district buildings. As it stands currently, all devices with wireless components are not allowed to be inside the school, but this is not written in stone (more of a known rule among the staff, but not a real policy)
But now, the School Board, the Principle and the Network Administrator are working on a new policy to ban all wireless devices completely and enforce it (they are planning to possibily include legal action as well, if hacking of the school network is done).
So, I sat down with the Network Admin and discussed the problem, primarily concerning Laptops. We require some way to make it (almost) impossible for a Laptop of a students to get onto the network.
The solutions we came up with were more theoritical than a reality. We believe that the Wireless access would not be a problem (due to WPK-PSK encryption), but we came to the problem of them plugging an ethernet cable into a ethernet port mounted on the walls, which would allow them limited access to the network.
The only way we could see around this problem would be to either find a program which recorded MAC addresses for all of the districts computer and only allow access to registered PC's onto the network, but neither of us were sure how to setup such a program (does one even exist, or is there one that comes with Novell, will it require a rebuild of the entire network?).
The main concern is that a student, who has his own personal tools on a Laptop, connects (wired connection) to the network, and is able to hack into the system, which would be very bad.
Basically, I just want any opinion on ways that we could regulate people within the district that have Laptops to keep personal Laptops off the network.
Misc. facts about the current network (I'm not 100% clear on the setup, but this is what I know):
-The network is set up in such a way that all of the district workstations boot into WinXP and force you to login to the Novell Server to access anything (from workstation resources to the internet)
-Even if you bypass the network's login (ex. alternate computer, boot with a boot disk) and try to access the internet, the Novell server requires you to login gain access (some kind of script pops in the web browser stating that you do not have the right rights to access the web)\
-The Server is running a recently new version of Netware (I believe Netware 6.x series)