This is part rant, and part plea for help. I had 2 incidences (and have talked to others who have experienced this, one of which lurks here and needs a solution) where someone plugs an XP laptop into the network, immediately causing problems. I've seen a lone XP laptop take down an entire LAN. Other types of problems I've heard about include XP finding and connecting to a wireless AP across the street and deciding on its own to "bridge" the 2 LANs. By the way, I know what bridging is, but I suspect that Redmond's idea of it is slightly different.
A). What the &$*%# is going on with XP? What causes it to DoS a LAN? B). How can a laptop be told to say on its side of the fence (we're talking clueless sales dweebs that aren't smart enough to toggle the wireless NIC off when they enter the building)? C). I'm looking for ideas (links, too) about these problems, technical descriptions thereof, solutions and work-arounds. I know that XP Professional is much saner than XP Personal, but since these are worker-owned laptops, I have no control over what they bring into the building. The company in question has a ban on XP, but that doesn't stop some lusers from trying to sneak their XP laptops into the building. Thanks. -- Joey Kelly < Minister of the Gospel | Linux Consultant > http://joeykelly.net "I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous." --- David Bradley, the IBM employee that invented CTRL-ALT-DEL
