[K12OSN] Using K12LTSP on existing school network

[Barry Cisna]

Hi Bob,

  Glad to hear you are giving K12LTSP a shot at your school. As you have
stated with only 6 thin clients they will never " bring down your
network". This is a misnomer by lots of people who are Windows die
hards. I heard the same speel when i started this 4 years ago.The bottom
line ,the longer you use k12ltsp the more you'll see the stabilty
advantages of it. It is becoming more and more refined each release,and
is very user friendly now with the ease of use with usb sticks,that are
now "plug and play". This use to be a headache to get working,but works
"out of the box" now. The audio probs are becoming less and less,but for
newbie admins to K12LTSP there is quite a bit of extra installing to do
to get all formats of video/audio players working which is getting to be
a must have in a school scenario.
As far as bandwidth,for now you'll be fine with just 100 mb switches from
s erver to your room switch. When we started out with 20 clients thats all
we had for two years.we had 60 clients the second year on only 100 mb
swiches just for an example. With the low cost of 1000 mb uplink switches
it easy and cheap to eventually upgrade your network to this,if you are
not already there.
There is such a set of variables ,though you'll have to monitor,for
example using tux math by just afew clients full screen will choke a 100
mb switch backbone or the server itself,hard to say which croaks first in
this , but you can webmail/office applications, light programming, gimp
editing,and no one else on your lan will notice any difference. The only
thing at this point you cant do with  a thin client that you can with your
fat clients there is burn cd/dvd's.
Good luck,

Take Care,

Barry Cisna
westcentral school