Hi,

as an admin in a network what kind of packages are available to give the users information on the state of the network?

Kind of like a "message of the day" thing!

This probably can be achieved with a mailing list too, however I'm wondering if there are dedicated packages for this? Maybe client/server software or something else RSS feed maybe??

Of course if the users run different operating systems then the software would have to be available to account for that unless it's web based so something that runs under Apache or by itself which can be integrated into a webpage.

Has anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

It seems to me that you're talking about disseminating information and the fact that the information happens to be about a network is not really relevant. (Though maybe it depends what you mean by 'network'...) Where I work we have a webpage with service status information on it. If there's a problem with a service then details get posted there. So I'd just stick the information on a webpage somewhere easy to find. Maybe do an RSS feed too because then people can subscribe to it with whatever software they want.

Of course if by 'network' you really do mean the actual network that connects all the machines in your organisation and it's important that you are able to disseminate information about it's failure then you need to use something that doesn't rely on the network. E.g. SMS, semaphore, some big signs somewhere everyone can see, or a town crier.

Network as in clients connected to a server via a switch and/or router!

I was just wondering if there was an app for it if say one of the segments fails or if there is work going on, say for example a department with its own server. So you tell everyone when they logon that server1 say is down. As that server would be for filestore say.

That's what I meant!!!

At uni a while back I think they did the same thing as your company so maybe that is the way to go.

Sorry if it seems a bit trivial but since I am trying to get into the field of IT I am trying to get as much knowledge about things as I can and yes it's a steep learning curve!

If http/RSS is the way to go, do you have any information (web page etc) on where I can learn about setting an RSS feed up to integrate into my website?

Most windows profile scripts will mount drives that the system maps for file storage. You could execute a popup message in a similar manner to the obligatory warning message about needing authorization to join the network.

In Unix/Linux, you could run one of the dialog programs or modify /etc/motd or /etc/issue. By the way, both of these files have manpages.

I've got round this by creating a network status page on my site within the intranet area.

However I would like to know how to be able to feed it via RSS. It would be helpfull for instant updates!