Ehtyar's questions

I have an Asterisk box serving an office of people. I'd like to provide instant messaging and file sharing capabilities alongside the voice and video capabilities provided by Asterisk (ala Windows Live Messenger, Skype etc). Asterisk does not seem to offer IM outside the context of a SIP call, nor am I aware that it provides file transferring capabilities whatsoever. The clients will be using Jitsi, so there are many protocols to choose from, but I'd like to provide as much integration as possible between the VoIP and IM/file transfer (ideally a single account that facilitates voice/video and IM/file transfer). Is this possible, and if not, what would be the most appropriate alternative?

Thank you.

I will be migrating my Windows 2008 Domain from a /24 to a /16 network (as an example only, not intended to be too specific), and the process appears to be poorly documented from my searching. I understand that I will need to change any static IP addressing and modify DNS (reverse lookup zones), DHCP (ranges) and Active Directory Sites and Services (site IP range) accordingly, however I am concerned that there could be some gotchas that I'm not aware of.

Links to any resources or any advice on migrating Windows Domains to new networks would be much appreciated. I will also be more than happy to post my own experiences when the migration has been completed to help future visitors.

I'm looking for a geographic location (not service) to host internet services that will give me the lowest latency on connections from two other locations. How would I best determine the most ideal midpoint?

We're currently scouting for solutions to a versioning/storage problem for large creative works. The designers themselves seem to want SVN, but this seems like an inappropriate mechanism. Files are expected to be in the 10mb-200mb range, they will be revised several times during the course of a project, then the final copy archived and the revisions erased.

NOTE: We're required to use an external SVN provider for internal reasons, but this will not be the case for a solution other than SVN; we will need a local solution for this.

So, I would like to know, does anyone currently have an internally hosted solution for a creative/design department, and if so, what software/setup are you using?

Thanks guys, Ehtyar.

Our company has several clients that run Wordpress blogs. Being that it's a small company, we (IT) are usually tasked with setting it up. Because our clients are typically not willing or able to maintain a VPS, shared hosting account, or dedicated box, we end up recommending they start a blog at wordpress.com. Then, six months down the line they change their mind and decide they want this plugin or that theme, and we end up migrating their blog to a shared hosting account.

What we'd like is a (paid) provider that will offer just what wordpress.com offers, but with full access to Wordpress as though we were hosting it ourselves. Our clients should not have to ssh to the box, or update wordpress themselves, that should all be taken care of. FTP would be necessary to upload themes or plugins on occasion, but all maintenance should be taken care of.

Does anyone know of such a provider?

We're a satellite office of a multinational corporation. We have a local domain controller, but we still experience a crippling performance drop after joining machines to our domain. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we might lessen or mitigate the performance impact of having machines joined to the domain? Please feel free to ask probing questions in the comments should you need additional info.

Note: We do not have full access to the domain or the DC, and thus are unable to effect changes even to our local OU regarding GPOs or general structure/layout etc. However, in the interest of completeness, please post even ideas that may require this level of access.