[K12OSN] Re: Responses to the central office

[Daniel Howard]

Hi Todd,

We had to deal with this kind of resistance and more, and here's how we 
dealt with the various issues:

1.  Keeping it off the district network: Fine, we found many classrooms 
had two independent Cat5 wires going to the room, so we used one for the 
district network to the teacher's PC (and any windows PCs required for 
special purposes) and the other one to feed the K12LTSP servers in each 
class.  We fed the Internet to the K12LTSP servers via a business class 
cable modem (6-10 Mbps, $100/month) connected to Squidgard/Dansguardian 
firewall in IDF.  Ultimately, the PTA paid $9000 to run 40 new Cat6 
ports from three switches, one to each room and some in hallways (for 
laptop carts), but finally the district acquiesced and said it would do 
a pilot of K12LTSP.  The new wiring was timely, as they wanted to do a 
centralized server model, which requires Gbit/sec to each classroom. But 
if they hadn't agreed to the pilot, we could have had two independent 
networks, one for teachers and admin PCs fed by district Internet, and 
the other fed by cable modem to all the K12LTSP servers and student thin 
clients.

2.  Concern for messing up teacher IP addresses: A district technician 
came in one day early on in our deployment and rewired a server and it 
began happily handing out IP addresses to the teacher's PCs, shutting 
off their Internet access.  That was when the district finally realized 
that we had moved ahead with our deployment.  Solution: hardcode the MAC 
addresses of each client to an IP address from each server.  Then, even 
if miswired, the LTSP server can't give IP addresses to the win PCs.

3.  Managing server/configuration: Linux allows secure login to manage 
each server from anywhere in the network.  With Webmin, it's GUI and 
easy.  And you can manage more Linux servers more effectively from a 
single location than with Windows.

4. Agree with previous posts on routers as commonplace in home and 
business networks now.  Point out that his home Cable/DSL router is most 
likely running Linux.

5.  Troubleshooting network problems caused by non-managed computers on
the network can be incredibly difficult: Reality, from all of this 
groups' collective experience I'm sure, is that it is *easier* to 
manage, and the Linux computers *are* managed, but by built-in 
capabilities instead of purchased software.  Built in Linux management 
capabilities exceed those of LANDesk currently, e.g., especially given 
that you can manage all those old Win 95/98 thin clients now, whereas 
you couldn't before using proprietary tools.  Point out that the 
experience of others is that managing the K12LTSP servers has proved to 
be *significantly* less time consuming than Windows platforms.

Regarding cost benefits, note the following:

Thin clients running Open Source Software lower the total cost of
ownership of technology for schools in the following ways:

   1.  Lower acquistion cost by at least 50%, typically more.  Software 
cost is zero.
   2.  Lower operational cost via reduced electricity requirements:  1/5 
Wattage of normal PC, plus smaller form factor: you can fit twice the 
number of thin clients on the same table.  Space and electricity were 
the final challenges we had at Brandon as we moved to a 2:1 classroom model.
   4.  Lower support cost: you only manage the servers, and one server
can run up to 100 thin clients.  Linux admin can manage more PCs than 
equivalent Windows admin.
   5.  Lower cost of retirement: thin clients weigh less than 1/5 of
normal PCs and schools have to pay by the pound to have them hauled off.

Plus, you can put dozens of modern educational software applications in 
front of your students for free, and can burn CDs with the software for 
the kids to take home and use there.  Open Source Software is free to 
use and distribute as one desires.  Figure out the cost of providing 
copies of MS office for every home with a PC, let alone Adobe Photoshop, 
a 3-D rendering package like the GIMP (doesn't exist, and by the way 
most Hollywood animation outfits have switched to Linux/GIMP), etc...

Regards,
Daniel

-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation

-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation