Question #1: Why don't the students appear in the LDCM Console?
There are usually three reasons why this can happen:
1. Verify that there are no personal firewalls blocking the LDCM port. LDCM 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 to the Start Menu,
- Click "Run"
- Type cmd, press the enter key
- Type ipconfig, press the enter key
If more than one adapter appears, read the LDCM Installation Manual on how to configure LDCM on computers with multiple NICS.
3. Verify that the teacher and student computers are on the subnet. If they are on different subnets then Multicast or a Subnet Directed Broadcast must be enabled in the LDCM Options dialog box.
If this does resolve the problem, please contact us.
4. If you are using a CISCO wireless access point, turn off the port-protection policy setting that blocks peer-to-peer traffic.
Question #2: What impact does LDCM have on the network?
One of LDCM's strengths is efficient screen capture and transfer methods. If the whole teacher's screen is changing LDCM only uses around 60K/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 our competitors will actually increase with every computer on the network.
Question #3: What impact does LDCM have on the performance of student machines?
In our testing, LDCM generally consumes 1/2 of the processing requirements of our competitors and a 1/4 of their memory requirements. In high load situations, LDCM uses about 4% of the processor and near 6 MB of memory on the client.
Question #4: Can I remote control multiple computers at once?
Yes. Select all the machines you wish to control, and hit the Control button on the console. This is a great time saving feature if you need to do the same thing to all of the computers at once.
Question #5: What is an Enterprise Class Access Point?
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. For example, we have tested the HP 420 and found it to work well. Similar products are produced by Dell, Cisco and IBM. This will benefit not only LDCM, but general student computing as well.
Question #6: What settings work best on a wireless access point?
If you wish to improve performance, you can optionally attempt to configure your Access Point. Since this differs from vender to vender, 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)
Question #7: What if I suspect that someone is using an unauthorized LDCM Teacher console?
If you suspect that someone has installed a rogue Teacher Console, go to the View menu and select Status Window. Any Teacher Console activity will show up in the Status Window (displayed at the bottom of the Teacher Console), providing machine and user name for any rogue Teacher console activity.
Question #8: Can the LDCM installation be scripted?
Yes, the install can be scripted to run silently from a login script. The command-line parameters are listed in the installation documentation. The LDCM student and teacher software can also be installed with the included .MSI file.
Questions #9: Can you run two teacher consoles on the same channel?
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. If both consoles try to perform an action on a student you'll get inconsistent results. For example, if one teacher blanks screens and the other teacher tries to show the teacher screen, the students will see the teacher's screen because she performed the action last.
Question #10: Can I group channels?
Yes. In LDCM, all 16,000 channels can be grouped. This is available in the Options dialog on the Network tab.
Question #11: Does LDCM support Multicast?
Yes. If your switches support Multicast or Subnet Directed Broadcasts, then LDCM can be configured to take advantage of these protocols. Multicast can be configured through the configure menu item.
Question #12: Does LDCM work with programs such as Ghost and Deepfreeze?
Yes, these are both compatible with LDCM. 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 LDCM. After LDCM is installed you can "Freeze" the PC.
Question #13: Can students uninstall LDCM?
The only way to uninstall LDCM is with the original installation file. It cannot be uninstalled through the Add/Remove programs group.
Question #14: Can you send and retrieve files from the students' desktop?
Yes! You can specify the destination folder for file transfer on the Teacher machine. Select the Administer menu, choose Options and go the Student tab. At the bottom is a section titled Classroom Manager 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
Question #15: Does the trial version interact with the real version of LDCM?
No. The 30-day trial will not run after 30 days and it doesn't interact with the real version of LDCM.
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