Leased Lines

[Brokengod]

Has anybody had any experience with leased lines between 2 sites?

[Red Plague]

My work has a leased line between Belfast and Portsmith, NH in the states.

Why?

[Nick]

MY company has about 60+ leased lines between dealerships & kings X & oxford....

why?

coldie,

[JonnyThunder]

Yes damnit. Tell us WHY!!!

:D

[Brokengod]

:D I'll let you know when i'm in work tomorrow, haven't got the details with me.

[Wraith]

Company I work for has in excess of 1,000 leased lines...

[The Shiznit]

go for vpn's.

[Brokengod]

I work for a company which doesn't utilise the technology they own or have any idea on how to improve things, that's mainly due to an IT manager with very few IT skills (a recent external audit has shown 5 years of mistakes, the manager has been here for 5 years).

A leased line was put in place a few years ago by NTL between our 2 sites (2 miles in between the two) . The product is called Fibrelink and it's a 10 Mbit link.

This is all of the information my manager has and NTL doesn't seem to have any more even though we still pay for it.

I'm pretty certain that it's been set up using 5x 2Mbps (E1) circuits to make a transparent LAN. The physical make up of the system at each end is 2 fibre optic wires that plug into a multiplexed optical modem, then 10 lines to a similar device but this one also has an ethernet port. This then joins directly into our network without a router hence a 'transparent' LAN link.

As NTL are unable/unwilling (no SLA either) to help it's probably time to move to somebody else that will provide some support. Any suggestions on leased line providers or alternatives to leased lines?

Until we find a replacement provider I would like to seperate the two sites using routers but most of the ones I can find are either very expensive or built for broadband for home use. Because of the current setup I could probably use a cheap broadband router at either end but i'm uncertain if this would work.

DON'T READ ANY FURTHER AS I'M JUST MOANING. |shutup|

Just to give you some idea of the level of compentence in this place heres a few 'issues':

NT4 Domain - Only 10 users were on the domain out of 80, this involved running around synchronising everybodys' passwords so they could share them. This has changed due to the IT manager being told to sort it out.

No DNS or WINS - only netbios broadcasts
No DHCP server - Loads of static IP's which aren't written down anywhere so it's hard to assign one.
A internet proxy server which is also our mail server, slows everything down.
No corporate licensing - Individual serial numbers for every computer.
No roaming profiles - people are stuck at the same desk.
No fileservers - We didn't have a single file server until I persuaded a director that they were good idead but then they wouldn't buy a server license so they decided to build 8 fileservers with w2k prof instead (limited to 10 connections at the same time)

These are just a few of the problems. I'm sure that other places are worse than this.

[Cluster]

MAN!

What a company....

On the router side of things you could go for a Cisco 1700 Series or Cisco 2500 Series routers I am assuming you have a X21 connection. I work for central government (I am a contract not a CS) we have one of the most secure networks (GSI), we have frame relay with C&W but soon to be replaced with Energis. PIX and Checkpoint firewalls.

Sounds like that IT Manager needs to be kicked out, I also assume that the company does not want to spend money to sort this out????

Stupid question this, but do you have any diagrams I can look at. I design networks for a living. I could knock something up if you want me to.

Also what traffic goes across the wire?

[Cluster]

Forgot:

Tell the IT Manager to read the dummies books on IT they are good for n00bs.

[JonnyThunder]

Christ Brokengod.... that sucks. But I know what it's like to work for an organisation that has no interest / resources to build the perfect working engine!!

- NT4 should be active directory (at least)

- Only Netbios broadcasts ffs. Thats pathetic. Fire that guy!

- Static IPs.... baaa ha haa haaa.....


....


Haaaaa...wwwwaaa haa haa haa

- Corporate licensing could easily be changed to a microsoft select agreement of some kind.

- No fileservers? Get those pikey ****ers to dig deeper!!

[JonnyThunder]

p.s....


Baaa ha ha haaaaa.... mmmmhaaaa haa haaa....

Static IPs....

Haaa... ha ha haa.......

[Brokengod]

Stupid question this, but do you have any diagrams I can look at. I design networks for a living. I could knock something up if you want me to.

The only diagrams that exist are simple ones that i've put together to try and explain to some managers and directors how everything works (very very basic). I'll try and put something togther.


Also what traffic goes across the wire?

Basically everything, as we're all on one lan, not subnetted at all. Some terminal server clients, terminal emulation to UNIX boxes, 50MB email attachments going out to everybody in the company, a lot of ODBC activity due to users dumping unneccesary data into spreadsheets from databases, also bloody NETBIOS broadcasts.



The company doesn't have a problem with spending money but the person who suggests what to purchase doesn't know the difference between a hub or switch, he thinks that vpn is a firewall.

I forgot to mention this, we don't have a firewall for our internet connection(ADSL). The proxy/mail server that's connected directly to the USB ADSL modem got infected with a trojan that gave complete control to somebody who put loads of mp3's on it along with an ftp server |dotty3| . Another time as the mail server was so basic (it's been patched recently) you couldn't disable it from being an open SMTP relay, BT banned us from sending email as 20K messages had been sent out the previous day.

Everybody else that I work with have wondering why the IT manager still has a job, we have 3 options:

1) Blackmail on one of the directors
2) Taking it in the **** from one of the directors
3) So incompetent, even the directors IT knowledge looks good

[JonnyThunder]

I'd walk into the directors office and say something like....

"Look, if you want a topology that works, ditch this ****ing moron and let us handle the situation. I'll recommend what you need, and you give me the money to make it happen".



Then, as you leave, say....

"Static IPs.... bwaaa haa haa ahaaaa haaaa"

[GoldRush]

hahahahahhahahhahhahaha


i think he will be fired when he says that

or you they are looking at the new manager

and thanks for the help broken

[Cluster]

Now you know why I gave myself the name Cluster (as in Cluster F*ck) and Fish as in the ex Marillion signer (from your area JT, I think).

Most companies these days adopt the VLAN route as even switches suffer from broadcast storms. VLAN's get around this.

I think we all need to go down to this place and see the director with a plan and cost for sorting this out.

[Brokengod]

"
Look, if you want a topology that works, ditch this ****ing moron and let us handle the situation. I'll recommend what you need, and you give me the money to make it happen".

I forgot to mention that the only other person involved in IT apart from the manager is myself. I handle everything from training users how to use word to adminstrating the unix boxes and the wonderful progress databases (obscure and crappy database).

I've only been employed with company for a year (my first IT job), haven't improved things much due to being stopped from changing anything (they won't even allow remote desktop help on IT managers suggestion). I have my MCSE now so i'm going to be looking for another job as soon as my girlfriend is settled in her new job.

[Cluster]

Progress !

Do you work for a manufacturing company?

Not using a product call MFG/Pro are you?

[Brokengod]

Progress !

Do you work for a manufacturing company?

Not using a product call MFG/Pro are you?

The software that some users have is specific to the industry, it's written poorly in Progress 4GL (programming language that's supposed to be quite good) and uses a Progress database (it could use anything, from DB/2 to mysql).

[Typhoid]

OMFG Cluster ! We use MFGPRo - It is the GOD. All of Schlumberger manufacturing sites use it.

Its taken us about a year to get to grips with it and we are still learning - so many ****ing screens! Thankfully in my role I dont use it much.

[GoldRush]

owwwwwwwwwwww nooooooooooooooo

here is the SHELL master again talking about schlumberger/dresser wayne

[Wraith]

We use Dynamically Allocated IP for virtually all the workstations (50,000 +) ... the only ones with Static are like mine- where I need to connect to SSH (Secure Shell - PKI) machines... so the old Firewalls will let me through as well.

Oh and AD (Active Directory) / Windows200[0/3] to control access to the Apps and general User / Group Admin ... NT4 doesnt integrate well with AD (works but you lose to many benefits)... install IBMs iTim to allow the Users to reset their own passwords.

Can your Network boys not point to the NTU out of your building? (should have the reference numbers for the line(s) used) Mux would be prior to that (you said that several links could have been combined)...
Another thought- Regardless of who supplies it to you- it probably would have been BT who installed / provided the original cables... could ask them to check their records (only Humberside? in GB do not have BT kit anywhere)...


Can the IT Manager make tea? if yes- shove a Pinny on him (pinafore) and pay him tuppence a day- if not then boot the prick out of the door.

[Typhoid]

I want to know Clusters view on MFG Pro... and what he knows - sounds like its bad.... hehehe

[Cluster]

MFG/Pro well what can I tell you.....

It's such a monster of a system, I used to work for a company called Hunt Graphics Europe Ltd I was the NT/Systems admin guy for the UK.

The IT manager (who was a great guy) had the poor task with other MD's from around the world put together a team of people to implement MFG/Pro as our main manufatcuring system across all sites.

This was being driven from the US guys had no say in the matter, and If you work for a US company you know what I mean about the yanks. Huh! You guys across the pond don't know what your talking about etc.......

Anyway 2 years later and the product went live all hell broke out (and yes we did pilot this system). All sorts of issues mainly around the modules you can purchase with MFG/Pro, didn't seem to handle multi currencies very well either. I hope things have changed since my exeprience with it and if anyone uses it they know how f**king BIG this thing is.

I think it's the next big thing to something like a SAP system.....