Computer Question

[Tim_MaA_MidB]

At the school I can plug in my own modem to access the internet, but I also get internet from the network... so I have 2 connections showing on my tool bar. They both appear to be downloading data, but how do they avoid getting their knickers in a twist?

[jhopgood]

I'm sure the techies will give a brilliant explanation but as an IT user, it seems that you have an intranet, which to quote is

An 'intranet' is a private computer network that uses Internet protocols and network connectivity to securely share part of an organization's information or operations with its employees.

And obviously your internet which connects you to the outside world.

Not greatly dissimilar (and here I pause so that the techies can shoot me down) to having an internal phone and dialling out facilities.

They will have lots of security so that those on the outside cannot get into your private school network, but as long as they are both downloading to different files, then there is no problem. I am sure you have been downloading music, e-mails etc, and at the same time, browsing the internet, so they sort themselves out.

It's only if they are both trying to access the same file that they will have a problem, and then they should advise. Don't do it very often but if you open up a word document twice, you normally get a warning that one is a copy and cannot be worked on.

Clever people these techies, they think of nearly everything.

Hope that has been enough to confuse you even more.

[Tim_MaA_MidB]

OK.

So, it will appear that I have a faster internet connection then?

[jhopgood]

You're getting into areas that I do not dominate, but I would have thought that the internet connection was independent of the intranet connection. Obviously the phone analogy does not work, but your intranet connection speed will be one rate and the internet another, as they are two different networks.
What may slow you down or vice versa, is the use of your computer resources, which, if your pc is anything like mine, the more that is going on simultaneously, the slower it gets. This is independent of line speed, but for the user it means the same thing.

I wish one of the techies would say something. I'm beginning to get out of my depth.

[jtaylor]

Interesting question, and I'm not that savvy on these things - but here's my explanation.
As far as I'm aware, each programme which accesses the internet will choose the connection it's going to do it through.
With an intranet, it often acts as a gateway to let you browse the internet - hence, you're actually connecting to the intranet, which is in turn routing internet traffic to/from the outside world.

If you then also have a dialup connection, this is simply another route to the outside world, and potentially a dangerous one.
When accessing the internet through the intranet, there's the school's built-in security and filtering, hopefully trapping any attacks (through the firewall) and also maybe trapping viruses etc. as they come in through email/content filtering etc...
But by providing a separate connection to the internet, you're bypassing all of that protection, and what's worse you could be letting a potential infection in through that connection, bypassing the school's firewalls and protections.....not a good thing! As the filtering/protection INSIDE the network is less robust than the boundaries, the infection can spread quickly.
In the company I work for, it's a disciplinary offense to connect any device to the outside world without explicit permission -
precisely to avoid creating a back-door into the safe bit of the network.

You could view it like a house. You lock all the doors, only allow access to people you know and trust, with good locks. But, if you then opened a trap door to let anything in, once in it can go anywhere and do anything at will....

In terms of which connection is being used, and how they avoid getting in a twist - I think this is simply that each application which accesses the network chooses its connection, and then uses it. For Internet Explorer, there's a Connections setup which you tell it what to use - it's clever, so you can tell it to only dial when a network isn't present.
I think most apps. use the Internet Explorer settings, but I'm not 100%.

Maybe that answers it - but I'm sure a networking expert could explain it better!

J

[Tim_MaA_MidB]

We have a simple system here at the school and both my computer and the school use the same Avast antivirus protection.

The school computer that has internet is a normal desktop with wireless network card and other laptops connect via adhoc link.