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Case Study 2: Primary School

This Isle of Wight school has a limited IT budget and a mixture of old and new computers - some networked, some not. The children need to be able to access their work and print from any computer. There have been problems with virus infections. Part of the National Curriculum demands that the children need to learn how to email, which relied on them using the ISP email server to send email to an external helper - this was not ideal, as the reply may not arrive until the next day...
The ISDN Internet connection was expensive and slow when in heavy use.

Solution:

All the educational computers in the school were networked together, including the individual classrooms. Rather than purchasing a new MS server with the associated expense of some 25+ client access licences, we installed free open source server software on one of the mid-spec machines, upgrading the RAM at the same time. Several older computers were brought back into service to increase the computer:pupil ratio to fit in with guidelines.
This PC is now used as a central file server, so that the children can access their work from any computer in the school. It is also running a proxy server to speed up Internet access and an email server so that the children can send mail to each other in school as well as externally, and see the results and replies instantly.
Having a central file server makes backing up easier.
The virus infection was cleaned up and a network virus checker installed, with all computers receiving updates automatically from a central source. All the PC operating system security updates were applied - some had never been done.
Steps were taken to avoid unnecessary 'dial-up' and associated costs.



For more information, give us a call or email Chris for an informal chat.

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Go to case study 3: Home user

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