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P2P Programs on K-12 Networks?
deque_alpha asks: "I am a system administrator for a small K-12 public school district. I am taking over after a bunch of goofballs have really messed things up, the technology department is in utter disarray. I have near infinite problems, but the hairiest are with people sucking up what little bandwidth we have, introducing virii, downloading warez, and generally causing problems with P2P file sharing programs. I don't generally have a problem with these programs, but they are not an appropriate use of the limited bandwidth of a K-12 institution as they provide little in the way of an educational resource, not to mention the legal liability they potentially introduce. The rub lies in that these people are teachers, and I have virtually no policy to back me up if I come down on them, but shutting them down is neccesary to maintain harmony (and legality) on the network. I don't have the authority to pen new policies myself, and my supervisor cannot to be counted on to do it either. Have any of you been in this position before? How would you approach solving it without totally alienating your users? How do you broach the subject of introducing new policies with supervisors?"
My favorite method at this time is to just shut off whatever I need to shut off. Limit access where it needs to be limited.
Then when the questions start flying I just shrug and try to look dumb. "I don't know what happened to your ability to download porn at work."
They wont know what's going on and most people despite all reason believe that computers act in a random and hurtful manner of their own volition.
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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
When it comes to implementing technology policy in any organization unfortunately the only way to be successful is to have 100% support from upper mgmt (or in your case administration). You can always regulate on your own and act like you have the authority, but sooner or later you'll piss off the wrong person and that person will just so happen to be best buds with your boss. Good luck.
It truly amazes me how many times I've been hired or contracted to do something but not had the authority to follow through.
It has the additional advantage that, if they have a problem with it and decide to bring the issue up with a higher power, they probably won't be able to explain why it's so important for them to be able to download music or images or whatever, and therefore probably won't get anywhere. A few weeks after we started blocking Napster, Gnutella and friends, the school principal sent out an email without consulting us saying that those programs were no longer allowed... most likely because he had no idea before people started complaining of what these programs were even for.
exactly what we did...block ports and make them send you a note detailing why they want a specific port open. Most people will realize how stupid what they're asking is if they have to sit down and write it out. errr please open these ports so I can run my p2p software to pirate music using school resources...umm maybe I better not send that one :) Use SECURITY as the overall kicker, in order to maintain the security and integrity of the network it is essential the Admin knows whats going on. BTW if you do get a moron asking for P2P ports forward it to the rest of the staff for a good laugh.
:)
Follow the examples of the Bastard Operator from Hell and you cannot go wrong
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Obviously, you've never worked in a school enviroment before. I'm guessing you're corporate, but a much smaller level (even Fortune 500's have more politics than your work). Small but growing regional business? Anyways, let me get back on topic.
I briefly worked on a smallscale rollout project for a major (top 50 in population) city school system. There were ongoing political issues at the the superintendent level, unrelated to our technical problems, but likely to affect everyone's job one way or another. But virus problems were becoming impossible to deal with, so they moved the date forward for another rollout project, and added a Norton AV procedure.
Let me tell you, even the smoothest Windows rollout project sucks, they are never interesting no matter what. You never learn much, but when times are tight like they have been...
Well, the firm I usually deal with, calls up with this job, and they tell me 5-7 months of steady work. Those in the know, know that this means at best 3-5 months of less than 40 hours per week, but that was figured into my equations. They make it out that this is as simple as it gets, just me and another fellow, to make it last longer, and spread out the cost for the school system (Don't these places have an annual budget?!? Don't ask me...). No problem. Only after awhile, does it become apparent that this guy was only barely competent to begin with.
Well, this tech firm (which will remain nameless, they've sued ex-employees before over such) put the new sales rep on the school. That was bad. When the school says they just want the 2 grunts, and want to use one of their admins for the project manager, he agrees. Doesn't even diplomatically suggest different. He meets with her several times, still doesn't suggest otherwise. She was, unfortunately, a total ditz that apparently passed a CNE bootcamp course a few years back. But if her technical competency was horrible, then her management skills were absolutely abysmal. This had disaster written all over it, right from the beginning.
Well, you remember how I said that it was a rollout already planned? Well, the bulk of it was for some Novell Netware software, zenworks client, a few other things that I never actually learned of. Well, the ditz CNE's boss (also a woman, hate to be sexist but...) was having a power lunch with the VAR who was pushing the nw software. And she signed the deal, I think this was for at least $90,000... only this particular software only works with NT. There was no netware equivalent. 100 grand, gone like that. I don't know what was worse, that she would buy software that she obviously had no clue about, or that there is a VAR out there that sleezy.
I go into the briefing, just the tech firm, no client people there. I ask, time and again, was this tested, was that... "Yes, everything has been tested thoroughly, we expect you to be able to do the installs 20 minutes tops, per station". We start the next week, at City Hall (the admin offices are the top 3 floors). It's a total mess. The dumbass CNE/admin decides that first morning, that she would like us to do an inventory at the same time. Hands us some copies of paperwork, standard SN, asset #, etc. We're talking close to 25,000 machines throughout the school district (though not all are in scope for this rollout, maybe only half that). What does she think, that it means anything on paper? Is she gonna do data entry herself, when we turn these in? Or is she just trying to sabotage us even more?
In the administrative offices, there is a mixture of Win95a/win95b/win98/NT4/win2k. Wide variety of machines, including some new ones being installed by school technicians. The new ones are compaq... but they have no contract with compaq at all. I'm guessing Compaq salespeople somehow knew what a mess it was, and wanted nothing to do with it. We are given nothing at all like real procedure documentation... I could write docs better than this. A single page. 1. The grammar was awful, and it basically said install this software. We ended up discovering for ourselves just what options were needed. In the offices, close to 1 in 3 machines broke badly when installing the software, even after we figured out the correct options. Bloated registries, version dll soup, user installed software, all kinds of different things. We were spending up to 2 hours per machine, and the one week at city hall turns into 3. The sales rep lets us know the client is a little bit upset, and can't understand what the problem is.
Well, we move on to the first school. God, it was horrible, when I was in school, there were 3 Apple IIe's in the science room, for a month (They got switched out to another school in the county after that). In this school, there were no less 14 computer labs, all with 20+ machines. Every other room had at least 1 and sometimes 2 machines. 95% pII +. What did they teach these kids? Well, they taught them to be secretaries and other minimum wage type things. Any number of incredibly cool things to be teaching them, but no, just word processing, maybe spreadsheets (though I could never confirm that one).
We get there, and no one has even heard there will be any work done on the computers. 2 days to straighten that out. We can do work now, but only after 2pm (but the doors lock at 4pm, have to be out by then). Most of the labs lock all the keyboards up, and no one has a key (apparently they get vandalized or stolen). Lose another 3 days there. We get permission from individual teachers to do this, before 2pm. But code red alerts happen at least twice per day. This is when even though the bell rings, and its time for a new class, the kids all have to stay in the current one. The teacher locks the door, and the sherrif and deputies go through the halls grabbing all the dope dealers. Code red's never happen at a set time, so we end up missing a progress meeting with the ditz CNE. That was bad.
Then, most of the lab machines are win95b, but haven't been reinstalled in over 4 years. Registries bloated so badly, that maybe only 15 out of 25 machines in any given lab are usable (and they've been like that for months, since the school techs refuse to support any machine not in the administrative offices). Of the 15, roughly 5 will have one set of win95 lockdown software on them, another 5 will have a different lockdown software, and 2 will have a third lockdown app. The rest have none. No one remembers or ever knew the passwords. When we do manage to disable it, if we can, it takes forever to learn just how to make it behave. But once our software install is complete, the machines become more unstable than anything I have EVER seen before. We end up rendering an entire lab unusable. We call up the ditz, she says if they still boot, proceed. They do boot up (most of the time), so we end up doing every lab in the school. We end up rendering all of them unusable. Complaints fly all over the place.
The sales rep arranges an emergency meeting with the ditz, her boss, and us. Plus another engineer from our firm, whom I question even his competency. We explain everything, including how this could only be expected when absolutely no testing was done beforehand. We explain that win95 is completely unsuitable, but even more so, when it isn't pristine (which is unbelievably generous, these had NEVER been reinstalled) you'll see these sorts of problems. We explain that the lockdown software is part of the problem, but not all of it. So they decide that the other tech will go work on another project, and that I and the engineer will go see if there is any salvaging it. We manage to go back to one of the labs we'd done. 2 hours there were enough to convince him (I winced at first, the first machine he turned on had almost no probelms). Every machine would BSOD. It would do the windows partial freezes, the buzzing mouse, all your favorite win95 problems. Some of the machines died at bootup, conflicts with the lockout software. He agrees that we can't go on as we had.
So, we make a proposal to spend a few weeks building install images and doing testing. We'll install 95 back on them, since that's all there is for licenses, but it will be pristine, each machine will have an identical image build. We'll standardize on one lockdown app, with documented passwords, etc.
Offer rejected. Too much embarrassment, I think that we made it clear that we had a clue, and all along knew how retarded they were. Also had a little bit to do with their strict no reinstall policy (I'm not making that up). Seems that at least 3 other dept's had claims on certain machines/labs, donations and what not. And their was enough inter-departmental rivalry, that IT wouldn't reinstall OS's, mostly because each dept wanted the same apps installed that were on the machines when donated. Which is utterly ridiculous, since M$ office was all that was ever used.
I got 6 week's worth of paychecks out of it. For trashing an entire school's worth of computers. Which, as far as I know, are still not functioning. Not that anyone cares. I do in a way, but have zero control over any of it. Makes me sick that my tax dollars pay for it.
Solution for the original slashdt asker:
Find another job in a non-k12 setting.
Nothing can fix your situation. You may be the only one there qualified to teach anything having to do with computers, and you are not a teacher. The computers are a waste of tax dollars in their current capacity, and are only ever used for the most outrageous abuses. The shit will hit the fan, though maybe not for awhile yet, and you do not want to be there when it does.