Computer networking in an elemantary school
In my presentation, I'd like to tell you about what was done in a primary school of Strasbourg (in France) to install computers in each classroom.
Firstly, I'll explain more precisely what was expected by the primary school. Then, I'll try to define some important words that will be used in the last part of the presentation. Finally, we'll see the solution that was set up, with a beautful picture that I drew myself with my computer last week.
Let me start with...What were we asked for ?
- low cost system was requested with 2 computers in each class room (= 20 for the whole school)
- it was expected that internet access should be possible on every computers, but filtered to prevent pupils from accessing the weirdest ressources of the web
- printing on every computer
- computers had to be unbreakable, should resist computer viruses, unexpected and violent shutdowns, shouldn't be broken by a fall on the floor.
Some definitions
- harddisk
computer device that allows a large amount of datas to be stored and kept even if the computer is turned off. - operating system
a set of computer softwares that makes it possible for the user to use the computer hardware, and interact with computer softwares. - CPU
Central Processing Unit, the computer component that does most of the processing.
The solution which was set up
[Ideas...]- Low cost
The school didn't buy new computers, and was given old ones instead but they had small hard-disks and poor CPU power. - Internet, printing
To minize costs, it was decided to share them. For that reason, one big and expensive printer was bought for all the school, and the internet access is shared by all computers.
In order to make the computers able to access those shared ressources, a computer network was set up in the school. Every computers and every ressources are connected to this network so that they can see each others (hub or switch). - Unbreakable
the Harddisk = fragilest hardware in a computer, so we took every harddisk out of the computers !
No harddisk = no software installed on the computers, so no viruses
Poor CPU = no risk of CPU overheating, no fan is even needed to cool the CPU
Great, but if people are prevented from installing their own softwares on the computer because we took the harddisk out, there's a problem. A computer is of poor utility if there aren't any software on it (especially games). In a word, if the applications don't run on the pupils' computers because there's no harddisk, they have to run somewhere else.
So, a big computer was bought (we shall call it the server). All software are only running on the server. The pupils' computers are dumb, they only know one thing : how to connect to the server, and they do this automatically when they are turned on. They connect to the server through the network. No applications are running locally, on the pupils' computers. Everything, all the processing is done by the server, the pupils' computers only display the results on the screen.
[... and concrete realisation]Some short technical details :
- The server (and as a consequence, the pupils' computers) are running under Debian Gnu/Linux. It's because Debian ist a great operating system that makes it possible for the administrator of the system to have its administration job done very quickly. And so, he can leave work early and spend the evening with his familly instead of fighting with the server all the night and going home at 4 o'clock in the morning, getting bad with his wife, and so on... so many thanks to Debian.
- It's also because the computers are just not powerful enough to run some other modern operating system. And finally, it's because Gnu/Linux is really less sensible to computer viruses than others well known operating systems.
As a conclusion, I'd like to say that the network described in this presentation has been running since Februar. It is used every day by pupils under 12 for things like internet surfing, text processing, computer painting... and there have been no problem so far.
