Fedora, Public School budgets, Volunteerism??

[Ken Jones]

On Sat, 2004-06-19 at 10:20, Ken Jones wrote:

>> Our Public School district needs VPN, but feels it can not afford it.
>> 
>  
>
What do they need the VPN to do? Are they going to connect network to
network with the VPN using public networks? Are they going to connect a
bunch of managed clients to a VPN concentrator? 
The purpose for VPN for our school district would be to allow staff to get at their shared resources and their Intranet from home.  ie telecommute.

I do not see a need at this time for VPN to VPN.  The connections between the various schools are, at this time, private and self contained.

I thought that this application would be the least disruptive to a M$ house because the VPN server would be located on the edge.  I could manage it from my home.  The school's IT people would hardly know it was there.  

Ken

David Vernon Wrote:>

>> I have the idea that I could volunteer my LINUX skills to the District 
>> (a strict MicroSoft house) by building and maintaining for them a 
>> software freebie VPN system.
>> 
>  
>
A strict M$ shop...I will echo someone else's recommendation to look
into OpenVPN. Easy to set up and very forgiving of layer 1-3 problems on
the network it is going over. 


>> It would seem that with the present budget crunches our public school 
>> districts, LINUX, plus volunteerism make a natural combo.
>  
>

No doubt. However, "strict" M$ shops can display an irrational fear of
the new and different. They seem to become strict M$ shops because they
have a fear of anything but the "safe" and default choice.


>> Do any of you know others doing anything similar?  If so, please put me 
>> in touch.
>> 
>> Ken Jones
>