3 locations, one server, multiple networks and multiple intenet connections

devnull

Hi,

I was hoping one of you who has a bit more experience would be able to help me find a solution for my paradox.

My school used to have only one location and computers in two classrooms and a few in the offices. But in the last year the school has grown a bit and they now have three locations. And here is where my problem starts.

First thing is that I would like to do is to separate the networks on each location. So that the office, student computers and wifi are each on their on network.
This I can just do by using multiple network cards and then setting another opt for a new network. Right?

Ok second, since most of the licenses for the software used are network licenses I need the license server to be seen on all of the networks. On the student pcs as well as on the office ones. But here's the problem I only have one license server in one location so I would need to connect some kind of VPN to the main location in a way that still keeps the different networks apart (office, wifi, student, etc.).

The third problem is I only have bad lines on all three locations. I can get more lines to the internet but none of them can be more than 1MB upload and 4MB download. Is there a way I can get two lines to work so that the connection are load balanced in some way and that it would still work even if one line is disconnected.

Now the forth problem is since the lines are bad and there will be quite a lot of clients on these networks I would like to be able to block some web pages on some of the networks (youtube, facebook, etc.). I've been using transparent squid to help with the connection, but I'm not sure where to start with the blocking of websites.

Anyway thanks for any advice on how to start achieving this task. Any help is welcome.

Bye

danswartz

The load balancing isn't really my area, but that might work. OpenVPN should be the ticket for you. I think squidguard might be what you want for blocking certain sites.

devnull

Ok thanks for the initial info telling me that I might be on the right track.

I'll start fielding around with this and check back if I get stuck on any problems I can't seem to fix on my on.

Thanks again and bye

Cry Havok

Yes
VPN might work, but it really depends on how the license server works. It maybe better to multi-home the license server - connect it to all 3 networks (which may also not work).
Yes - see the Multi Wan forum
Yes, Squid+SquidGuard will handle that

Supermule

Why not a Vlan capable switch with the license server on default Vlan and PFsense with one Vlan'ed interface and loadbalanced WAN??

Then you can define exactly what kind of traffic that is allowed to pass through the different segments.