I work in a Cisco lab at a community college. We installed serial console servers in our lab/data center so the students can perform initial device configuration without having to mess with rollover cables. The computers in each of our classrooms each have 2 NICs. One is connected to a patch panel in the data center with no intervening layer 2 or 3 devices. The other one is connected to the school's network, I think to a layer 3 switch Which also eventually connects to the console servers in the data center. The NIC connected to the patch panel doesn't have a fixed configuration. It's used for the labs.
In the past, if the lab config conflicted with the school's network settings we just disabled that NIC in control panel, but we can't do that now because we need access to the console servers. We can add static routes on each PC, but we'd have to change the route for every lab.
I suggested using the IP address ranges reserved for testing for the labs with a permanent static route on the PCs, but that would require the instructors to edit the curriculum, not to mention it would limit what stuff we could do in the labs.
There's also a wrinkle regarding jurisdiction. We (the Cisco academy) don't have access to the equipment between the classrooms and the data center. While I'm sure we can work something out with the IT department, I'd like to know if there's something we can do on the PCs alone that would solve the problem.
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