School Network Plan

sci0x

Hey guys,

In the next few weeks i am going to be setting up a network of computers which are planned to be used by students during and after school etc. They will be more than just computers for the computer room, but specialised for students needs.

I will be buying 10 computers and setting up a network between them, and also buying software for the computer including games, research and more.

It would be great if you could give me ideas before i go ahead and do this. Everything, from what computers to buy, what network equipment, what software for the computers and also an idea of what all this is going to cost.

All your ideas for the plan will be noted.

Thanks in advance,
Denis

jesus_thats_gre

Allow for expansion!!!

Keep it neat!

Try to get recent releases of the software, if kids see Office 97, they dismiss it as crap and old!!

jesus_thats_gre

Try to get the best components you can for the money you have. If the computers are being used for games, there is no point getting a 3.2 P4 and using an on board graphics card. Try to balance the cost.

sci0x

Yes i intend in having the latest software and also the computers will be used by teenagers.

I am looking for a bit more indepth ideas, what actual computers to buy, games that are there for learning like strategy games, and not shoot em'ups, what networking stuff to buy etc.

woolymammoth

introduce them to linux.. you could have all or a select few computers on dual boot.
Give them Openoffice.org, 'cos its not that different from M$ word, kids are usually
very quick to pick up how to use s/w. plus if they can use it they'll defo be able to
use word. if its for students then they probably shouldn't have any games on there,
which cuts out the need for any kinda graphics card.. onboard graphics & sound
would do grand..

student needs.. one printer and one scanner.. possibly one low tech camera..
a burner and DVD-ROM on at least one pc.. 'cos you could share them on the
network..

are all the pc's gonna be in one room?

Mutant_Fruit

A fast network card is a must, get a gigbit ethernet connection if you are going to be doing a lot of sharing between computers. Its not too expensive, but it's well worth it.

Hardware wise, why would school kids be gaming? They're there to work! Athlon XP 2500+ offers best bang for buck at the moment, so go with that, and onboard sound and graphics should be all you need.

A 40gb hardrive in each should be plenty, but give one computer 160gb or so, in case your doing video editing later, and you'll need plenty of space for that, espically if there are 10 groups each trying to edit at the same time.

512mb ram in each would be plenty.

Also, if you're ever thinking of going down the video editing route, get a DVD-Burner, you can get a DVD-burner for cheap in komplett this week, theres one on special offer.

rymus

whatever you do... lock the computers OS right down to the bare essentials. I mean allow them to run Office programs, access internet, run a couple of games and nothing else. I'd suggest ranger to you (www.rangersoft.com) but it's probably overkill for a 10 computer network. Definately, before you do anything, secure everything or you'll find yourself reinstalling OS's and all the apps every week. Either that or just keep a ghost image of the machine and ghost em all once a week. But that's just a pain in the ass. Prevention is better than cure!

Mutant_Fruit

Ghosting would be easy enough, especially if he had one big drive to store the images on.

po0k

a cheap 16-port GigE switch costs ~250, alot of motherboards have onboard GigE at the moment.
As regards monitors, get Hansol920Ds.
they're nice, big and bright with good colour representation, and you can run them at 1152x864 @ 100Hz, so the kids won't be blinded by 60Hz refresh rates.

I heartily reccomend you use Linux, even in Dual-boot.
For schools there's really no reason to use Windows anymore.
For video editing, XVid for video and Ogg Vorbis for sound

MrPinK

You should get some software for web developement and programming. Student Edition of Visual Studio is free, and so is J2SE. And don't be really uptight and disable things like the command prompt, nbtstat, ipconfig, etc. They did that at my old school, there's nothing worse. It just lead to a big competition to see who could get admin access first. Kids can learn a lot from playing around with the basic network tools. Let them mess about a little.

"So, like us, let your children run wild and free, because, as the old saying goes, 'Let your children run wild and free'."
-Homer J.

zoro

I'll be doing this myself in about a week or two's time and i'm only starting to look into it now

I'll be doing it on ~40 machines, and i was thinking of runnign them all on 100Lan and the server on GigLan. ghosting them all is a must - there's no better way to fix a probelm

Microsoft Licensing is a bitch though, I never thought of the Linux way though. A massive Redhat network would be much much cheaper to do - but I'm not 100% up on the whole linux scene

*edit*
Mrpink: If it's anything like I remember it, it was all too easy to get admin - the thing is that I'm doing this in the very school that i hacked to pieces as a "kid"

Getting admin on them was no challenge though, security was a joke - that's why i'm going in They want a secure, easy to use system ... and just thikning now, with a Redhat/Linux system, virus problems dont really exist either!

joePC

For a 10 computer network I would go with .11g wireless, saves alot of hassle and is simple to set up, with the cost of wireless so low go with that.

Expansion is so easy with wireless configure your wireless card weather it be a laptop or desktop takes less than 2 minutes & there on the network, expand your range with a repeater (€100) its all very easy, security is not really an issue with this type of network, no real important info on the comps so thats not a worrie.

Gigabyte eternet is way over kill for a student network.

Use this advice,

Thanks joePC

Gerry

I'd strongly suggest you run linux, at least in dual boot, but preferably as the main os. It won't be difficult to setup, if you are unfamiliar with linux you can do a hard drive install of knoppix. Or just use fedora, it is as easy as windows to install ( IMHO ). Windows might seem easier to set up initially, but you can mould linux exactly to your needs, plus you will be able to get advice on how to lock the machines down easily, without buying 3rd party software. You will also get less security headaches, and no licensing worries.
There is no reason, as Syxpak has said, to use windows in schools any more.
A friend of mine has setup a primary school with debian linux. It runs perfectly on every machine, and the kids have been able to use it with no problems. Recently, I helped him to get quakeworld running on all the machines, so yes, they can even play games. Quakeworld is an ideal choice, as it runs acceptably on even the crappiest machines, it is simple, and happens to be the best FPS also

zoro

Originally posted by joePC
Gigabyte eternet is way over kill for a student network.

Shelling out ghost images over a ****ty lan isn't the best idea ... 11g or 100M ...

the server should always have a higher grade bandwidht than the clients anyway to prevent bottleneck

maxheadroom

You might find this interesting - but you'd need to use the Gigabit eithernet for this to be workable methinks...

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7418
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7419

Civilian_Target

There's some good advice out there on the software, so here's my advise, mostly on hardware.

If you're ghosting the machines (that is, cloneing all the harddrives on a eg. weekly basis) gigabit ethernet is a must, otherwise 100mbit will do. A cheap 16-port 100mbit switch is e50 on dabs.com, a gigabit one is 6 times that, probably more.

PC hardware, I'd strongly recommend you get AMDs if you plan on gaming, they're they cheapest option ATM. If you're going Linux I'd strongly suggest getting Athlon64s, they're soo much faster than anything else (I've heard good things about Linux Madrake 64 too). For graphics, if it's Linux get nVidia Geforce, otherwise get ATI Radeon 9 series. Finally, if you're planning Linux setups, I strongly recommend avoiding Serial ATA hard-drives because support is far from perfect at the moment. When you decide on a hardware setup, check it on Linux websites out there, a google search will give you a simple yes/no answer.

You should probably get a box with extra RAM and a second hard disk to set aside as a server, and that should DEFINITELY be running Linux, preferably Red Hat, Mandrake or Debian (they're all well supported for server use). If you're going windows on the rest of the PCs, office is a waste of time, install Openoffice.org and mySQL for databases.

That's all I've got to say...

sci0x

Thanks guys,

You really appreciate all the help you are giving me.
I've received some great advice from you all and my plan is coming together perfectly!

po0k

Before you go speccing:
How much money you got?

I'd seriously reccomend getting a 16-port Gig switch, or at least a 100meg switch with a gigE uplink for the server, whether you plan to use ghosting or not.
And use proper "Fast" CAT5e UTP or STP (shielded in case you're running it by electrically "noisy" equipment).
"Fast" CAT5e is rated for 300Mhz signals so will easily take Gigabit Ethernet over copper if you plan to upgrade the network later (just get a fully gig swtich and 10 GigE cards cos they're only ~€60 each for 3Coms off komplett.ie right now).

You could very well go for a fully onboard system, nVidia nForce2 IGP (onboard graphics, the SPP doesn't).
These boards still have an AGp slot, so the onboad can be disabled if you want to isntall a newer card.

Athlon XP2500+s or even Durons would be plenty powerful, maybe slap in some PC3200 DDR ram aswell, say 1 512meg stick in ech machine.
With a 120Gig hard rive for under €100 nowadays, ech machine would have plenty of storage.
And DVD burners are cheap and affordable now (~€130), CDRW/DVD-Rom combo drives even more so for the rest of the machines (~€50-70).
Get some nice CHieftec Dragon Midi- or full-tower cases (there's actually very little difference in the prices and the full-towers make it look like the machines are really powerful

19" Hansol 920Ds are good CRTs, and affordable (~€220).
Myself and 4 of my friends each have them for over a year and I can't complain.
They can run at 1200x1024@85Hz which lends to having lots of desktop space in which to work at a nice comfortable and healty refresh rate, all at an affordable price, especially when compared to TFTs.
The only downside is that they are large and you'll need a bit of deskspace.

Also, have you considered the power supply in the building/room?
Will it take 10 machines + a server?
A UPS might be an idea, at least for the server and AV-editing machine and switch.
Prehaps you could try for a bit of sponsorship off APC for the UPS, and maybe Komplett/Peats/eLara might be willing to give discounts on the hardware (especially for such a large order and that it's for a school).
A laser printer would also be an idea worth looking at, I don't think a networked one would be totally neccessary, as the server could share it over the network and manage the spooling for the LAN.

Will there be a proper internet connection there? DSL or something?
Again, the server could act cash the web cache proxy, web server, mail server, NAT router and firewall, all in one.

MeatProduct

The thing to consider with gaming on Linux is that you'll need to get WineX from Transgaming and that's €99 per machine as well as €60 per machine per year for updates. That's assuming you want good support for gaming.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Nick

Gerry

I don't think there would be that much gaming happening, it is a school like For the occasional game, s
omething like quake ( read my post ) is a good fit for the environment. It is open source, has a native client and server with no need for emulation, and runs on any hardware.

po0k

Originally posted by MeatProduct
The thing to consider with gaming on Linux is that you'll need to get WineX from Transgaming and that's €99 per machine as well as €60 per machine per year for updates. That's assuming you want good support for gaming.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Nick

Afaik you only pay if you wish to have input into which game gets support next....

zAbbo

The amount of games for Linux is actually really good. As Gerry said you can go with Quake1 - http://equake.quakeworld.nu/

just drop over to http://www.happypenguin.org/ every once in a while