[some of this post is a bit geeky some isn't - just for the people who stop reading the posts when the come across a word they don't know]
On Thurday night I went off up to Yorkshire with Joe to stay over at swanky country house with one his client's in between Harrogate and Ripon before going over to Pickering for a spot of network tiding...
The trip in was some what uneventful - although it started to snow as we drove up Sutton Bank!
Above is are photos which are a small indication of the mess we came across. Upon closer inspection we realised that, whilst it looked like there were two separate ethernets running along side each other... they were infact connected somehow, somewhere in the buildings (3 buildings all linked by fibres in a crazy fashion...) - as the machines that did different things were on different IP subnets they didn't know (and couldn't connect) the machines. This is somewhat of a problem because we want to let all computers acccess the Internet from one broadband connection... instead of the several dial-up/broadband for specific computers there currently were...
This was quite useful having all the computers on the same physical network... as in one place a single computer was linked by fibre to the building next door - however for some reason the media convertor (to convert fibre back to twisted pair) didn't appear to want to play ball... so we just connected his machine to the network local to the building he was in (why this wasn't done in the first place is anyones guess!)... due to the sillyness of the network it now means that when his computer talks to a computer in building 2, his data goes through a fibre to building 3, and then loops back to get its data from building 2. Bit crazy, and can be fixed quite simlply, but we didn't want to have to break the network to reconnect it all in a sensible manner!
So, yeah, broadband for all the computers... not as easy as one might think. Mainly due to the silly number of subnets (all connecting to different suppliers networks via their own routers which are also spread aronud the building). We soon(ish) realised that the computers that really really needed broadbanding were on a subnet that was easy to tame. Just messed around with static routes (ewww) on the computers.
Later, the plan is to put some form of Linux routing box in, which will work out which of the suppliers routers to send things to, and NAT the new set of IPs we give all the machines to ones which the suppliers networks are expected. Rebuilding the connections for the network would also be helpful at this point, to make it even slightly more logical. There's patches going on allover the place... it's a right rat's nest. I'm just glad they've stopped using the satellite system... (I'm not joking!)
Ah well... what's going on there is prime example of what happens when you don't really know what you're doing networking wise and just bodge things! On the not knowing what you're doing front...
They'd originally asked an "IT Professional" to sort out getting to share between two of the machines. The guy duely got an ADSL Modem/Router/Switch combo, installed it under a guys desk. He couldn't put it on the main network - as "it'd break things". So, he installed a second ethernet card in the machine. However... if the guy was connected to the Internet the suppliers thing on the other network wouldn't work - cause the computer had no idea where to send the packets... (therefore to connect to the Internet he had to disable his Internet network controller) the other machine he shared was downstairs and didn't need access to the supplier's thing, just the Internet... so he plugged a wireless broadband router switch into one of the ports of the modem (via the uplink port!?). This meant that the machine downstairs when talking to the Internet was getting itself well and truly routed and NATted about. I'm suprised it worked.
For us to install our intelligent option we needed the password for the modem. We called the "IT Guru" to ask him, he didn't want to tell us - a) because it was probably one of his pets names and used for all his passwords and b) we were somewhat treading on his toes by trying to do something he thought and had told people wasn't possible. He even told us it wasn't possible... the loser :-) Eventually, he gave us the ADSL passwords and we factory resetted the router. Oh, look within about 10 mins we had 4 machines in the building happily connecting to the Internet and the suppliers thing... at the same time. For the cost of time and one bit of wire! "IT Guru" said it was only possible with a 5000 quid server... and then I'm not even convinced he'd be able to work out how to do it! Ah well. I'll stop bragging now.
Then it was back to the idyllic village for pizza and beer in the local (erm... 30 mins walk) pub.
Our hosts (who's gone the the theatre) had kindly left us some beer to drink...
As if the dust on the top of the necks wasn't enough to say it was quite old stuff...
... it was slightly out of date... and tasted it! We soon committed it to the sink!
So, that was my last few days. Quite fun really - almost felt like I was on holiday, what with being in such nice surroundings and staying in 5* accommodation. I can't wait to go back to sort the rest out...