rendrag

I was actually looking at getting an entry level NAS for my home network... data redundancy is my major purchasing reason... I looked at a few sites, and found http://www.smallnetbuilder.com has a NAS chart that compares a lot of different NAS boxes in different performance categories. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/29671/75/ I was looking at D-Link's new NAS as my next purchase. 2x250GB RAID 1 would be a pretty good start.

i'm having a debate with our outsourced tech, and i thought I'd reach out to the MSFN community for assistance. My as/400 technician seems to think that the iSeries architecture is more "bullet-proof" than the x86 architecture (which was developed by IBM, no?). The argument she's trying to make is that if we switch platforms with a switch to new software (which means we would no longer need her), any new server we get (dell, HP, etc..) would be less reliable than the current server. The way I look at is if the x86 platform were so terribly unreliable, the majority of corporate america wouldn't use it. I also don't see them picking up these iSeries servers in droves either. who's side do you take?

well, if you know some of the specs (CPU, RAM, # of hard drives, video card), that will help. The size and type of monitor would also help, as well as anything else you'd want backed up. 2nd would be the amount of backup time you'd be looking for.

I would buy the most UPS that I could afford. Don't worry about buying "too much" ups. If you oversize your unit, you'll only have additional runtime, and you never know what you'd like to back up. If you undersize your unit, either you won't have enough runtime, or you'll overload the unit and it won't support your system once the power goes out. APC's selector is not very up-to-date, so it's tough to use that. The average PC will be about 75-115 watts. A higher end gaming PC will be up around 150 or so. Some PC manufacturers will list the power requirements in their documentation, but if you go by the size of the powersupply, you'll never be too small. good luck!

work: home:

i'm not totally familiar with that particular router, but I'm pretty confident you can block websites based on URL. That is a flat out block... it doesn't care whether you're an admin or restricted user, it just blocks whatever you tell it. You cannot password protect the site, it's either blocked or unblocked. 2 options I can think of: 1. install blocking software on each PC. I'm not aware of any software packages that do this, but i'm sure they could be found. 2. Change up your network and setup a server to run active directory. You should be able to block sites based on the logon usernames or groups of users that logon to the server.

so active directory is running (each username stored on a central server). They probably have multiple groups of users. Some user groups are allowed more freedom than others. My guess is you're in a pretty restrictive user group. You might be out of luck short of convincing your admins to move you to a better group. Those restrictions are in place for a reason, and the security is usually more work to bypass than it's probably worth, otherwise, it wouldn't be very secure, would it?

frankly, even if you have just 10 PC's on a 100MB network, you shouldn't experience any network-based lag. Any other lag would probably be PC induced. If you're using XP, go to your network connections and check the connection status for your Local Area Connection (that's the default name). In the Connection section, it should tell you the speed. Make sure it's at 100MB. If it's not, you can force it to work at that speed if the NIC supports it by going to the properties of the device via the following (again, assuming XP) open the connection status as before, and click on the button at the bottom labeled "properties". From the next window, click the "configure" button that's at the top. From the next window, click on the advanced tab, and depending on your particular card, look through the list on the left to see which one allows you to change the connection speed. Set it to the highest available, full duplex

what do you mean "it will connect in my friend's name"?

bcc still works, but I guess the way outlook handles the BCC addresses has changed. The people in the BCC don't see everyone else the e-mail was sent to, they only see themselves.

i've never configured that specific router, but all you would have to do would be to configure a request coming into your router over UDP port 3389 be forwarded directly to your PC at work (if I understand the question)

in the morning, is it roughly the same time each morning you try to access the net? Is it possible there are access rules in that router that turn off web access during certain periods of time? I know my linksys one has that feature, though I'm not sure about yours.

Hey guys, looking for some purchasing assistance. Application: Database server to run our business. Would hold our customer base (appx 500), process order entry, accounts receivable/payable/general ledger. Users: 10-13 internal users, plus 5-15 remote users (customers who submit electronic orders occasionally) Gut Reaction: dual processor machine, 2 GB ram, hot-swap HW RAID 5, 250GB disks Notes: I chose 250GB disks because we'll have to keep ~20 years of order history, so that storage space will get me started. your thoughts?

I can't see it not being in the warranty period... Pre-N routers haven't been out in the retail space for more than a few months. Any manufacturer worth its salt will give you at least a 1 year warranty. good luck. Any problems I've had have always been fixed with a hardware reset. You might also try re-flashing the firmware, should one be available from their website. That may sometimes fix access issues, especially if there's just a corruption in the firmware.

i think if you check your wireless properties, it should tell you which Access Points are designated preferred APs. If your neighbor's access point is the preferred connection, each time that signal is picked up by the wireless NIC in your PC, it might drop the current connection in an attempt to connect to the preferred network. Unfortunately I'm not sitting in front of a wireless device where I can tell you exactly where to find that setting, but it's somewhere in the wireless network setup. I believe it may be where you can refresh the list of available networks. good luck

unlikely... dial-up IP's tend to change everytime you dial-in

have you run a speedtest before? try running one from http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest I've had it happen to me personally, I always used to think the site I was downloading from would throttle the bandwidth. Other than that, I'm not sure

if your old router is the primary connection to the cable/dsl modem, you don't need to tell your ISP that you added anything inside your home. Frankly, you don't have to alert them to any changes in your network setup unless you replace the old router with a different one, and after you've updated the settings on the new router, the internet isn't working. Generally, that means they've tied your account to a particular MAC address. You can either clone the old MAC (any router worth its salt will have a MAC clone feature), and then you won't need to tell them anything, or you can call them and have them change the registered MAC address.

are you behind a router? If so, what's the model? I've known routers to get bogged down with heavy throughput when hit with many concurrent connections. What are you downloading from? p2p, http (web), ftp?

i'd definitely make sure that you haven't statically assigned IP addresses to any of the machines. If you have, go back to DHCP for everything until you get this worked out. It's possible there's an IP conflict when you mix in static and DHCP if you haven't planned for it first. from the run prompt (start > run) does typing "//2003_server_name" (without quotes) get you anywhere? It should bring up the shared folders on that server.

It would definitely work as digerati says, especially if you turn off the SPI firewall in the router interface. However, could you not leave DHCP enabled, and just change the subnet and IP range router 2 provides? Wouldn't that completely isolate both networks? As LLXX states, the internet is made up of interlinked routers, so isn't this much the same? I've been pondering picking up a cheat WRT54G off of ebay and using it as an internal router for test machines I don't want anyone else in my house getting access too. Thoughts?

couple things I would test first. I assume you're trying to connect to a mapped drive on your server 2003, so everything I'm about to suggest is based off that assumption. 1. can you ping the server 2003 machine from another machine on your network? 2. Is that server's computer name listed in your workgroup on your network places? 3. Do you have any other machines on your network you are trying to map drives to, or is this the only one? Can you test from a different machine? let us know how you make out

it will probably work, but may not operate reliably because of the amount of overhead involved with running the tunnel

since you won't be playing games, that PC would work fine. You wouldn't need a floppy drive because your motherboard will support booting directly from a CD, so pop in your XP or whatever OS you're installing and go to town good luck

thanks for the reply. I'm using DHCP from a watchguard soho box, and it ties the IP leased to the MAC address of the NIC, so that won't work. Something I was testing this morning really messed me up though. I tried pinging this machine from another, and it continuously times out. The only thing I've added to my machine was a cisco vpn client that I run once a week to do administrative tasks on a remote system. I started searching around in there and noticed that "Stateful firewall (always on)" was checked for some reason. I unchecked it, and wa-la! It's working again. It didn't make sense because the program is manually started by me, it doesn't start w/ windows. I look in the services list, and the VPN service is constantly running. anyway, thanks!