[K12OSN] Using K12LTSP on existing school network

[Bob Hill <thebobhill mail com>]

Hello all,

I am a high school teacher in North Carolina.  I have been testing 
K12ltsp and other LTSP solutions on a small (5 clients) classroom local 
network for the past six months or so.  The current Fedora Core 6 
K12ltsp works very well and I am happy with the performance.  I am not 
network knowledgeable  yet, and have questions I hope someone here may 
answer.

How should I approach our IT staff to get an okay to attach my classroom 
server to our school network so we can have internet access for the thin 
clients?  I have tested this and it works fine, but the IT staff always 
warns us of attaching switches or routers to the school network and does 
not allow it.  Would attaching my LTSP server to the network cause 
problems somehow? 

The school network uses fat windows workstations logging into the school 
server through Novell, but most if not all of the applications run 
locally.  My classroom LTSP server does not need to log on to our school 
network.  Internet access just passes through the school server.   It 
seems the school network would see my classroom LTSP server as just 
another single machine with one IP address, while my the switch I am 
using would be behind this machine attached to the thin clients.  Please 
explain to me how this would "bring down our school network" as I have 
sometimes been told.  I understand that the clients may be increasing 
the bandwidth demand on the port the classroom server is attached to, 
but is this a problem?

Finally, if this is a problem, could I somehow set up an extra cacheing 
proxy server or something to download some complete websites during off 
hours and have the LTSP classroom server connect to that for simulated 
internet access?

Thanks for any suggestions or directions.

Bob Hill