[K12OSN] Not recreating the wheel

[Lewis Holcroft]

Hello all,

Well now that the demo is complete. I have complete buy in. Oh they 
want this in place next month. Oh...

So I figured I would write you all with a little map of before and 
after and you could indicate potential problems.

Currently there are five locations. The main location has one router to 
the internet and one router to each of the four remote offices. Our 
product is located on the main server and is accessed via a telnet 
client. Hence the small bandwidth to the remote sites. The Main server 
is also a DHCP server and the routers to the remote locations support 
DHCP relay. So was are able to control the network routing and the like 
from the main server. This setup also allows us to route web browsing 
out through an internet connection at each location and limit traffic 
over the very slow ISDN lines.

Here's an ASCII map.

Main Office LAN                                          INTERNET
   10.0.0.0/24                         WAN              |
        |                        aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd        |
        |                               |               |
        +-- .1 -- Linux Server -- .1 ---+        Type of connection
        |  (eth0)          (eth1)       |   (STATIC IP, DHCP, PPP, etc.)
        |                               |               |
        |                               +----- Type of Router
        |                               |
        |
        +-- ... -- Main Office PCs/Printers
        |                                         Remote A LAN
        |                                          10.0.1.0/24
        |                                               |
        +-- .11 -- Pipeline --ISDN-- Pipeline ---- .1 --+
        |   (local-remote)              (remote-local)  |
        |                                               +-- .10 Internet
        |                                               |
        |                Remote A PCs/Printers -- ... --+
        |                                               |
        |
        |                                         Remote B LAN
        |                                          10.0.2.0/24
        |                                               |
        +-- .12 -- Pipeline --ISDN-- Pipeline ---- .1 --+
        |   (local-remote)        (remote-local)        |
        |                                               +-- .10 Internet
        |                                               |
        |              i Remote B PCs/Printers -- ... --+
        |                                               |
        |
        |                                         Remote C LAN
        |                                          10.0.3.0/24
        |                                               |
        +-- .13 -- Pipeline --ISDN-- Pipeline ---- .1 --+
        |   (local-remote)        (remote-local)        |
        |                                               |
        |                                               +-- .10 Internet
        |                Remote C PCs/Printers -- ... --+
        |                                               |
        |
        |                                         Remote D LAN
        |                                          10.0.4.0/24
        |                                               |
        +-- .14 -- Pipeline --ISDN-- Pipeline ---- .1 --+
        |   (local-remote)        (remote-local)        |
        |                                               |
        |                                               +-- .10 Internet
                         Remote D PCs/Printers -- ... --+
                                                        |

What I have proposed is a LTSP server at each location to server that 
local subnet. Each desktop will have a telnet session that routes back 
to the main location where are product lives right now. I am thinking 
of authenticating against the current server, and NFS mounting users 
home to the various LTSP servers. So telnet, NFS and authentication 
would happen over the ISDN lines. Web and the like still routed to the 
net locally at each site.

Are there any major issues, can this be done. Without having to replace 
the ISDN connection.

How can I best keep the remote terminal servers in sync with each 
other? Very few users work at more than one location.

I plan on using squirrelmail and pointing it to the current imap server.

The alternative to this windows and frankly windows is part of the 
problem. These folks spend more of their time dealing with anti-virus 
updates and windows updates than they do on their actual job.

Once again, Thanks in advance.

---------
The instructions said to use Windows 98 or better.... So I installed 
Linux.