Networking 101

It was great to finally be able to get a hold of my local IT guy. Chet always has his hands full. So, I was really excited when he got back to me so soon to help with this assignment. Chet's to do list just got a lot bigger when a bond passed allowing our school a remodel. Virtually everything will be brand new in this remodel as far as technology goes. So, essentially during this interview, Chet was able to do a little show and tell. However, some of the questions I asked had answers with some grey area. This is mostly due to the fact that some decisions are still being made based our budget.

Like I mentioned earlier, our school has finally caught up with the times of technology. With every classroom equipped with a brand new laptop, SMART Board and document camera, staff members can't help when being excited about the upgrade. Unless of course you're the tech guy who is only supplemented with 2 tenths of a paycheck to make sure the new server and endless amounts of equipment is running up to speed. Strangely enough, Chet seems to have a great attitude about this paradigm shift, no matter what the cost is.

I feel like my learning curve shortened immensely after my conversation with Chet about our school's network. Chet really did an excellent job making our new network make sense to me. The first thing we talked about was the addition of a new data room in our downstairs. Chet explained to me that our main data room was not fast enough, especially with our new portable lap top labs. With the addition of an IDF the classrooms downstairs will be running just as fast as the ones upstairs. Then Chet went on to mention that our category 5 wiring will be upgraded to a category 6 to insure the network is running at full speed. This will be great, especially since our school will now have full wireless capabilities. One thing that will still have some continuity is our server. Our school decided to stay with Novell for our server. We will also still be using Microsoft exchange in addition to Novell. This will allow us to operate Microsoft Outlook for our e-mail accounts. With Microsoft Outlook, all of us will still be asked to sign a user’s agreement. With 8 people losing their jobs 2 years ago, many of us Jeffco employees take this agreement very seriously. In fact, when any staff member goes to sign on to a our tutorial wiki space they will be asked to sign into Novell because we have used Youtube as a resource. Hopefully we can find a better way to work around this problem.


One thing that I wish I could illustrate is our network layout. With our school still being under construction, it is impossible to get a diagram of this. Needless to say, I am extremely excited about actually seeing our network in action this fall. It will be very rewarding to understand the entire system now that I comprehend how most of it works.