LanSchool Frequently Asked Questions

Our install guide, user's guide and video tutorials are a great place to start.

All LanSchool normal traffic is on port 796 (0x031C) (either source or destination). LanSchool "status" traffic is sent to port 1053 (0x41D).

Check out our instructions for working with VLANS.

Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 are supported for web limiting. Support for Firefox 3.6 is in the works.

No, both of these operating systems shipped after LanSchool v6.5. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of LanSchool.

Although students may think so, LanSchool is not a virus and is not infected by a virus. It is a false-positive. Update to the latest pattern file and scan again. If it continues, please notify support@lanschool.com and we will send a message to your anti-virus vendor.. We have received confirmation from Symantec that the latest pattern file will be updated to reflect this false-positive response.

There are usually four potential reasons why this can happen:

1. Verify that there are no personal firewalls blocking the LanSchool port. LanSchool configures the Microsoft Firewall that comes with Windows XP SP2, but there are too many personal firewalls for us to configure all of them automatically.
2. Check to see if you have two or more Network Interface Cards (NICS). The easiest way to check this is to go into the options menu, network tab and select the appropriate NIC.
3. Verify that the teacher and student computers are on the same subnet. If they are on different subnets then Multicast or a Subnet Directed Broadcast must be enabled in the LanSchool Options dialog box.
4. If you are using a CISCO wireless access point, turn off the port-protection policy setting that blocks peer-to-peer traffic.

Under CONTROLLER on the WLC configuration page change "Ethernet Multicast Mode" from "disabled" to "unicast".

Also enable the broadcast forwarding option. On some older Cisco access points you must disable the port protection policy that blocks peer-to-peer traffic.

One of LanSchool's strengths is the efficient screen capture and transfer methods. If the whole teacher's screen is changing LanSchool only uses around 24Kb/sec. This is less than 1% of a 100 MB network. Because we use a broadcast packet, the bandwidth consumed is the same with 2 computers as with 200 computers. The bandwidth used by many of the competitors will actually increase with every computer on the network.

In our testing, LanSchool generally consumes 1/2 of the processing requirements of the competitors and a 1/4 of their memory requirements. In high load situations, LanSchool uses about 4% of the processor and near 8 MB of memory on the client.

The number of websites you can allow or block depends on the size of the URLs. The total amount of characters you may type in each dialog box is 1000. The block and allow features are not meant to replace your Internet content filter. We recommend using the allow feature to restrict students to a small number of websites for a particular lesson.

If you are using a browser other than Firefox or Internet Explorer you can block ALL web browsing, but you cannot block or allow certain sites.

Block and allow certain sites are now available on Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Current customers can contact LanSchool and receive a username and password to the LanSchool Customer Portal. This portal will always contain the latest upgrade that you are eligible to receive. To upgrade, login to the customer portal, download the .zip file, extract it and follow the instructions for upgrading clients in the LanSchool v7.4 Installation Manual.

If all of the computers in the lab are the same you can remote control them at the same time. This is a great time saving feature if you need to do the same thing to all of the computers at once.

Consumer access points are generally not robust enough to handle consistent traffic to more than 5 clients. Enterprise class access points are designed to support 50 or more clients at the same time and generally sell for around $300 dollars. Our favorite is the HP 420, but similar products are produced by Dell, Cisco or IBM. This will benefit not only LanSchool, but general student computing as well.

If you wish to improve performance, you can optionally attempt to configure your Access Point. Since this differs from vendor to vendor, we can only give general guidelines. You'll have to consult your Access Point's manual to see how to actually make the change on your particular Access Point.

1. Drop the Beacon Interval as low as possible (generally, this can go down to 50ms).
2. Set the DTIM to ZERO. (This allows broadcast and multicast packets to be sent after EVERY beacon packet.)
3. Increase the Broadcast or Multicast speed. (Not all APs allow this to be set)

It is very rare that a student uses an authorized console, unless you've given them access to the console program. However if you suspect that someone has the Teacher Console, there is a utility on the utilities directory called SecurityMonitor.exe. This program logs all LanSchool activity and can help you quickly identify unauthorized consoles. Once students know that this tool is in use, unauthorized activity stops quickly.

In LanSchool v7.4 you can watch the same security messages in the status window.

Yes, the install can be scripted to run silently from a login script. The command-line parameters are listed in the installation documentation. The LanSchool student and teacher software can also be installed with the included .MSI files.

Yes at no additional cost. However, it is recommended that one console monitor the students while the other console perform actions such as blanking screens, showing the teacher screen, etc.

Yes. In LanSchool v7.4, all 16,000 channels can now be grouped. This is available in the Options dialog on the Network tab.

Yes. If your switches support Multicast or Subnet Directed Broadcasts, then LanSchool can be configured to take advantage of these protocols. Multicast can be configured through the options menu.

Yes, these are both great programs and are compatible with LanSchool. With Ghost we recommend an image per lab or change the channel with a batch file. In a lab, it is critical that the Teacher channel and the Student channels are the same. With Deepfreeze you must "Thaw" before installing LanSchool. After LanSchool is installed you can "Freeze" the PC.

The only way to uninstall LanSchool is with the original setup file. It cannot be uninstalled through the Add/Remove programs group.

Yes! You can specify the destination folder for file transfer on the Teacher machine. Click Options and go the Student tab. At the bottom is a section titled 'LanSchool Folder on Student'. If you wish to send the files to the student's desktop, add the following:

C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Desktop

Note: %username% is case sensitive

No, the 30-day trial will not run after 30 days and it doesn't interact with the real version of LanSchool. However, you may use the real version of LanSchool v7.4 to upgrade the demo version from the teacher computer.

Click here to see the system requirements.

All customers are eligible for free minor revision upgrades. For example, if you purchased 7.0 you are eligible to receive 7.0.3.5 for free.

have three years of upgrade protection for major revisions from the time of purchase. For example, if you purchased 7.0 and within three years we release 7.1 then you would be eligible for a free upgrade. If it is outside of a year, then upgrade pricing applies.

To request an upgrade, e-mail sales@lanschool.com. Send us your contact information including your name, e-mail, phone