The school term has now come to an end and the school is free of its usual hustle and bustle. This gives me a great opportunity to get to work on the library.

It's still unclear as to just how things are going to be set out in the library. We've had one discussion about the placement of the trunking which will accommodate the LAN cables. This would be ready to start as of Monday. We still are unclear about the quantity of thin clients we will house, but I would imagine the space could house nearer 20 thin clients. This would lower our overall child to computer ratio to nearly 3:1.

The thin clients have now been sent back to Thin Store after a good trial period. In order to test the load that the server would be taking we setup 20 of our new PCs in the ICT suite to boot using PXE. We bought a 100/1000 switch from CCL computers for around £150.00. Using this we connected a 1000mb link to the server and each PC took a 100mb link. We ran a series of tests, mainly noting the speed and overall functionality of the LTSP thin client network. Here are our findings:

Speed tests using 1 thin client to 1 server:

Power on to Edubuntu logon screen
The HP thinclient took 1:58
The IGEL 3110 took 1:34
The IGEL 3210 took 1:14

From logon screen to desktop took around 30 seconds for each machine.

Loading the GIMP paint/draw application
The HP thinclient took 0:10
The IGEL 3110 took 0:06
The IGEL 3210 took 0:05

Loading the Open Office (word) application
The HP thinclient took 0:06
The IGEL 3110 took 0:03
The IGEL 3210 took 0:04

Loading the Tux Paint application
The HP thinclient took 0:04
The IGEL 3110 took 0:03
The IGEL 3210 took 0:03

Loading Firefox web browser
The HP thinclient took 0:08
The IGEL 3110 took 0:04
The IGEL 3210 took 0:02

Quite an impressive set of times. Functionality is great on all the machines. The HP lagged behind and its graphics capabilities were much weaker than the IGELs, taking longer to redraw the screen than the other two.


Speed tests using 20 (3 Ghz Celeron PCs, 512mb RAM) thin clients to 1 server (Pentium 4, 512mb RAM):

Simultaneous power on to Edubuntu logon screen
1:25 - 2:00

From logon screen to desktop took around 20 seconds - 1 minute for each machine.

Loading the GIMP paint/draw application
0:51 - 1:00

Loading the Open Office (word) application
inconclusive due to bug which has now been remedied.

Loading Firefox web browser
inconclusive due to bug which has now been remedied.

We had a few teething problems with Edubuntu to start off with. It was my fault as I hadn't created an individual login for each user. We all used the same login name which resulted in two of our tests remaining inconclusive.

If two or more sessions have the same login then this will result in an error upon loading the desktop. A user must only be logged in on one workstation, otherwise, that user can't load the same applications they are using on the other terminal they are logged into.

The test really surprised me all round. I was amazed at just how fast things were running, especially given such a modest server specification.

When we get our thin client network running, I would like to install some more RAM in the server and use RAID. £200 would enable us to do this. Therefore bringing the value of our server to around £600.

We never enabled network/intranet/Internet access on the server so don't know how the system would cope with streaming video. My hope is that the IGELs can handle it just as capably as the dedicated ICT suite machines in a Microsoft environment.

CCL Computers
http://www.cclonline.com

Today proved successful for Holmfirth. We managed to get the opportunity to evaluate three different models of thin clients, the HP t5125 the IGEL 2110 and IGEL 3210. I look forward to setting up our first mini thin client network.

I was advised by a friendly woman from Thin Store which model would better suit our needs.
My first requirement was the size, it had to fit on the back of a monitor. My second was its ability to boot from the network - this feature was called PXE. My final requirement was it's cost.

I was recommended the 3 models and was told they would all fit on the back of a monitor, although size is not too important at this stage.

Our aim would be to scale down in size as much as possible given a budget of between £100 - £200. An overall budget of £250 - £350 per machine would be realistic given the price of monitor, keyboard, mouse and cables. 4 computers could be purchased for £1000, this price will only decrease given time. At this stage I'd like to experiment with LTSP. I've looked into using an open source operating system called Ubuntu Linux, this has a tremendous amount of support and is of course without any added license fees.

I've previously installed Ubuntu Server on a Pentium 4, 1GB Ram PC @ nabb. As yet I have not setup LTSP. I have recently discovered that the server version of Ubuntu is unnecessary so have installed Ubuntu as well in a dual boot fashion. This can later be amended.

Now I look forward to reading through various resources to get the system working and start experimenting. Information on setting such a system up is available given google keywords 'ubuntu' and 'ltsp'

Thin client models
HP t5125
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/12454-12454-321959-338927-89307-472257.html
IGEL 2110
http://www.igel.com/igel_rubrik/powerslave,id,52,nodeid,52,p,0,_language,en.html

IGEL 3210
http://www.igel.com/igel_rubrik/powerslave,id,53,nodeid,53,p,0,_language,en.html

Thin client sales
http://www.thinstore.net/

PXE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment

LTSP
http://www.ltsp.org

Ubuntu Linux
http://www.ubuntu.com