Expanding a network with portable devices

Introduction. . . . .

This document has been written on request by two Microsoft Certified Professionals, with several years' experience of the ICT environment both inside and outside of educational environments. We are both active on the RM Insite forum, where people who maintain and manage an educational institutions' IT solution from all over the UK share their problems and expertise with each other.

Recently, the topic of connecting external devices to the school/college LAN has been raised, although technically this is not a problem, there are other implications that have to be taken into account. Educational IT environments are not the old BBC's or Acorn's in the corner any more, these are very expensive industry standard tools that need specialist attention to maintain and support. Professional consultation is an absolute must these days, if you get your IT strategy wrong, you could be breaking several laws and face some very hairy lawsuits. Just because you're an educational establishment, does not mean you are immune from the relevant laws, e.g., Software EULA's, Data Protection, Computer Misuse, etc, etc. Portable network capable devices have been around for some time now, but only recently have they become more of a useful tool for education. Educational establishments are waking up to the idea that this could be really useful, or a really big mistake to do at this time.

The people that make the decisions of "shall we or shan't we?", often aren't fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages and the full implications of such a project. You can no longer just dive blindly head first into a project, it needs a full liaison and time given to the relevant parties involved to make a project go with as little mishaps as possible.

We hope that this document will help you make your decision; we have tried to make this as easily readable as possible and evenly argued on both sides.

Good Luck!

Jaysan Bunoomally, MCP.
Network.Manager@ICT-Support.co.uk

Robert Moir, MCP, MVP.
rim@lutonsfc.ac.uk

 

Advantages of having a "Portable Network" - By Jaysan Bunoomally, MCP

Sir, there aren't any computers free. . . . . .

Sound familiar? Well working in a medium sized secondary school myself, I do hear this more often than I should. We have just spent a considerable amount of money getting our computer : student ratio down, on paper our set up sounds pretty nice, we've almost met the government targets and technically everything is working as well as can be expected. Good.

We've had an ICT development plan and have pretty much stuck to it, more computers here, another printer or two there, etc, etc. We know where we were five years ago and we know where we should be in the next year or two. Ideal. Our system meets current criteria, we're following national guidelines, I know I'm doing my job the way I'm supposed to and have my head in the books keeping up with current trends. Everything's running smoothly.

Then someone says, "I have a laptop I'd like to. . . . . .", "Oh dear, someone's just thrown a spanner in the works" I think. "Think of all that extra work, licences, legal implications, technical support, etc." I am held responsible if anything illegal happens on the ICT side. But, isn't that my job anyway? Stop and think for a few seconds. Staff and students with notebooks, PDA's, sub-notebooks, HPC's . . . . .the list goes on. Think of the possibilities for a moment.

Now which do you prefer the sound of?

i) Sneakernet
ii) Windows 2000 Servers and Clients

Explanation:

i) Work at your computer, save you work on a disk (if it fits) put your "sneakers" on (blame the Americans for the terminology!) find the other computer you want to work on, maybe it's connected to a printer, put your disk in. Hope the disk has saved you work properly and hasn't got scratched by that pen in your shirt pocket and re-open your work off the disk. Oh, that's if the computer has got the right software installed on it to open your work. Not very appealing is it?

ii) Lots of possibilities here. All that is needed is a common protocol and client services to start a basic network.

Windows 2000 Terminal services.
All notebooks could be configured so that when in use in the educational establishment, they simply double click an icon on their screen. They are then presented with a logon screen where they can use a powerful Windows 2000 network.

You can make use of older computers, for example, you can get a 386 running at 33MHz with 4mb of RAM, 500kb of diskspace and a 32bit version of TCP-IP running Windows 2000 professional. All you need to buy for your client is a TS CAL, however, if the laptop already has Windows 2000 Professional installed on it, a TS CAL is included. You can even use devices that run CE to connect to your Windows 2000 LAN. Now RDP can use TCP/IP to carry audio to the clients as well as keystrokes and mouse movement. This option will also allow you to monitor and interact with the users' screen with no need for additional software.

Synchronising Work
You can bring your notebook into school/college, connect to the network and synchronise any work that you have done while at home. You could set your offline folders to synchronise every time you log on to the LAN. No technical jargon or experience is needed by the user to keep the notebook and the users' area on the school's server in sync. With Windows 2000 you can also set disk quotas for your users with out having to use a third party solution. Also this version of NTFS supports encryption and compression (not both at the same time).

Software
You can quite easily install software on the clients' notebook. For example, if I had been asked to make a certain piece of software available for Y10 maths, I could make this software available to users through group membership and through the Active Directory.

Scenarios:

A student, Paul, is going to be off school for some time and his parents do not want him to miss any work.
Paul has his notebook at home with him. He can use his notebook to access his email which has got instructions from the school about what work has to be completed and which information he needs to research. He follows the link from his email and is taken to the school Website where he downloads the task sheets and views the lesson objectives. Paul then uses the Internet on his notebook to do the required research and completes the work that he has been set. Now Paul uses his notebook to dial into the schools' RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service) Server and synchronises his work on his notebook to his user account area at school. The following morning, the teachers can access Paul's user area and see that he has done the required work; they mark it and email him with feedback and more tasks for him to do.

A member of the SMT working from home during the holidays.

John uses his notebook at work and at home. In the evening he decides to do some reports, he now decides he wants to print them but does not want to use his own printer at home. All he does is dial into the school and use the print queue for his office to start the print job. He knows that when he gets into work in the morning that all of his work will be printed out ready for him. This work he has done is very important and needs to be backed up somewhere. Floppy disks are too unreliable, so he dials into school again, copies all of his work over to his user area and later that night it is backed up onto a DAT tape that night. The server has Anti-Virus software installed and actively scans any incoming files for known viruses.

Extra Bits…

The notebooks don't have to be Windows 2000. As I stated before, all that is needed is a common protocol and client services, a member of staff could bring in their notebook from home plug into the network (mast have a CAL if NT is set up for per seat licensing mode), use the Internet using the local Proxy server, or relevant IP address from the DHCP Scope to talk to the router, copy work to and from their user area, and use the printers on the LAN. If this idea were to go ahead, the staff would have to be briefed about the relevant parts of the Data Protection Act pertaining to sensitive data.

Obviously when entering the proposed project, foundations of minimum specification - hardware and software would have to be applied. Your support team has to support the hardware and software, and therefore should be a major contributing faction when drawing up guidelines. Any notebook that staff plan to purchase to use on the LAN, whether personal or corporate, specifications should be passed through the team who actually does the supporting themselves for approval or modification in design spec'. Security design will be a major task, this needs to be carefully planned before the commissioning of the network begins, the Active Directory is a very powerful and effective tool - but only if deployment of your plan is successful, you cannot cut corners, as you may make a security hole. If your LAN is set up the way it's supposed to be set up, you shouldn't have to worry too much about people getting access to where they shouldn't, viruses etc. If you keep up to date with your AV definition files and service packs (with Windows 2000, you don't even have to re-apply your service packs, you "Slipstream") there should be not problem at all.

I don't think I'll go with the Sneakernet option….

Just because we are a College or a School, why does that mean that end users have to get reduced accessibility? We have good ICT in schools and colleges now, people like it and they use it. Fine. Why not make it more accessible? The technology is here - now. You just need funding, experienced and trained support teams, a clear vision of what can be accomplished and the perseverance to see the whole project through. We could implement this technology now, and prepare our students and teachers on how to use the very latest and the very best of Information & Communications Technology.

Jaysan Bunoomally
Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
Network Manager

 

The downside of laptops in education - By Robert Moir, MCP, MVP.

We have talked about the advantages of using laptops in the classroom but like everything there is a downside to any scheme like this and it is a real simple one. Laptops are expensive. They will take up more support staff time than the traditional room full of desktop machines, which translates to more money; laptops cost more to purchase and run than a desktop machine of similar specification; laptops are more likely to be stolen or vandalised and require fixing or replacement; it's more difficult to update software on laptops than it is on desktop machines; laptops are far more likely to be "fiddled with" by their users than desktop machines; and users are far more likely to lose work saved onto a portable laptop disk when the hard drive fails (and it will) than they are if the work is saved from a desktop machine to a properly backed up server.
Laptops at Luton Sixth Form College
For some time now we have been providing laptops for students with "special needs". This scheme has worked very well in as far as meeting its primary goal but there are some disturbing omens here for those considering a scheme for giving every student a laptop. Out of 10 laptops issued we have had 1 stolen from a student and another 1 that has required a fair amount of extended repair for various reasons. The rest have required comparatively little support but of course this just means they "merely" generate the normal support burden for 8 laptops.

Lets think about the stolen laptop and it's damaged sibling. 2 laptops might not sound much but out of only 10 laptops that is a 20% loss in the 6 months we have been running the scheme. 20% of our laptops are out of action. Imagine walking into a classroom with 20 students in it, 2 students cannot work because they no longer have their computer with them and 2 others cannot work because they managed to bring in a computer but it has been taken away to be fixed by a technician. For a college the size of mine, we would issue just over 2000 laptops if we moved our students over to a mobile computer scheme. How long could any educational establishment sustain the loss of 10% of its computers every six months, with no option other than to replace them because you moved your entire curriculum around to be orientated to using those laptops in each lesson? Or the expense of more technicians to fix the broken 10% of your laptops, because your current technical staff will be quite busy supporting the remaining 80% of your computers.

How long could any lesson plan survive 20% of the students in a class being unable to work for whatever reason in a lesson? Out of our 500 or so traditional "desktop" computers on the learning network at the college we usually have less than 5 out of action at any one time - 1% or less of our traditional machines unavailable vs. 10 to 20% of our laptops. Quite a difference, I'm sure you'll agree. Oh yes, and before I forget, out of the 20 or so laptops we have for staff, we've probably had about 2 or 3 stolen. Imagine a teacher in a new "laptop enabled" lesson unable to teach because they don't have a laptop with them. I suppose they could steal one from a student but then what will the student do?

Laptops and "Total Cost of Ownership"

Information Technology investments, like all business decisions, are often evaluated on one important criteria alone-cost. The TCO or Total Cost of Ownership notion acknowledges that the costs of hardware and software are connected to other costs such as support, training, and downtime. TCO can be easily measurable and directly usable to create actionable IT improvement plans. I will briefly discuss TCO principles and explain what TCO means when talking about laptops. I'm going to set aside the cost of purchase of laptops and desktops from this discussion, but the reader should keep in mind that in addition to the costs I outline below, each laptop you buy will cost approx. £1000 to equal the performance of an approx £600 desktop machine. (Laptop to desktop price/performance based on recent quotes from Stone Computers, Luton Sixth Form College's hardware supplier).

TCO is a comprehensive model to assist with understanding and managing budgeted (direct) and unbudgeted (indirect) costs incurred in owning and using an IT component throughout its lifecycle. A good TCO model highlights current issues, justifies the need for change, and delivers feedback on cost management. The objective of any TCO analysis is to lower costs while maintaining or maximizing individual productivity.

Many studies, by several researchers, over at least 10 years have indicated that networked computing costs, over the useful life of the network components, are heavily dominated by two cost components … cost of downtime and cost of support. While the numbers differ slightly from study to study one fact is apparent in all studies … 75% to 80% of the total cost of ownership, over the useful life of the network components, can be attributed to cost of downtime and cost of support.

This would lead one to believe that any strategy that wisely uses capital investment money to create a networked computing environment that is more available (lower downtime) and more easily and efficiently supported (lower support requirements) would usually provide a very attractive return on the additional invested capital. If you use this criteria to evaluate the differences between the "< 1%" downtime of our desktop machines vs. 10-20% of our laptops then there really is only one choice.

How you calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) for desktop and mobile computers depends on what you buy and how you manage your shop. Hardware is easy: find the leasing price for the equipment you want the TCO on, and that should set the baseline for your monthly hardware costs, and it includes disposal. A well-run business environment typically records one-third of an hour of service for each desktop PC per month; the standard burdened rate for service is £100 per hour. (However, this can range from one-sixth of an hour to one hour depending on the complexity of the environment and the age of the equipment). Laptop computers generally average one hour per machine per month, mostly for network and printing problems and other issues while they are remote.

Typically, you might allow 1 hour to set up a typical RM connect machine on a network, and 3 hours to set a laptop machine up and get it issued out to a student and spread over the life of the machine, which we'll assume is 36 months for both machines (typically though many people consider 24 months more realistic for laptops), that's about £4.10 per month for desktop and about £8.30 a month for laptop computers.

Keep in mind these are business costs, where the users are somewhat less likely than education to be "hostile" to their machines, and are definitely a lot less likely to try and "fiddle" and "hack" than the average student, so we can probably add at least 50% to the costs for a laptop to cover the need to be forever fixing laptops that have been "played with".

Other Laptop Security issues (Including allowing users to put their own laptops on the network)

In this section I am going to very quickly outline some of the technical problems with laptops - the arguments in this section will be most pertinent to those people who are considering the currently trendy idea of insisting students purchase or loan their own laptops for use in the school - which is a flawed idea anyway because I think we are supposed to be reducing, not increasing, the "digital divide".

While you do not control the laptops being attached to the network you have no idea what might be running on the laptop in the way of viruses, remote control software, spy ware, etc. If your organisation owns the laptops you are able to put into place and enforce policies that ensure you keep the laptop's security settings, AV software, etc. up to date and working correctly. Oh and while we are talking about viruses and "malware", what happens to all the student's work on a laptop if their work is never put onto the server to be backed up like you do in a traditional network? Conversely, would you want to take responsibility for a virus going the other way from the network onto a user's machine and trashing it?

If everyone buys their own laptop to their own specifications, what do you do with the person who purchased the entry-level machine that struggles to run the new school management software because it doesn't meet the minimum requirements? If I bring my laptop into work and it doesn't quite fit in with the set-up here (quite possible; my laptop is a NT Server and a PDC) then do I change the laptop to fit the network or the network to fit the laptop? I know the correct answer is the former but I also know plenty of users would claim it was the latter. Especially if they have a particular set-up at home that requires using the laptop in that way. What happens if I put my laptop on the network and a policy in place on the network restricts my access to various functions on my laptop? (By default that's what happens right now if you put a non-Connect machine onto your RM Connect network.)

How will your support team cope with a range of laptops of different makes and models, some of which run windows 2000, some of which run windows ME, some of which run Win 98, some of which run Linux, and so on? You could of course issue a statement saying "We'll only support certain operating systems" but then you know some staff will assume that rule is for everyone except them, and if people "own" the laptops you'll still see a support burden caused by... Well I won't call it tinkering because it's their laptop, but you get my point.

What happens when you want to issue work to students in Word 2000 and half of them can't read it because their laptop came bundled with Lotus SmartSuite instead? Do you install Office onto all their laptops (assuming they all run a variant of Windows in the first place) and if so what do you do about licences when a student leaves the college taking their laptop with them but without uninstalling the copy of office you paid for? So we can add a copy of Office for each student who leaves your school or college at the end of each academic year to the "yearly churn" costs of this model.

Worse still, for those with Campus or Select agreements, MS walk into your site looking to exercise their right to audit every bit of kit in the place to check you have licences for your software and someone has been installing unlicensed software on their laptop which has since been brought into work and put into place as if it was the employer's laptop. I'm sure you can see how this would cause confusion?

In conclusion - The 'portable network' has it's advantages, but they come at a price

While it might be nice to give every student and staff member in your school or college a laptop when they walk through the door it just seems to me that it raises a lot of issues that need to be resolved.
Laptops cost more money, per item, that a desktop machine to purchase, they require more support than desktop machines, they tend to depreciate in value faster than desktop machines and from the studies we have undertaken here at Luton Sixth Form College we have seen that up to 20% of a laptop equipped class would be unable to work at any given time, compared to less than 1% of a class using traditional desktop machines. So at the moment, moving everyone over to using laptops means spending more money and hiring more staff just so you can offer a service that's worse than the one you currently offer by a large margin.

Let's face it, most schools and colleges are struggling to keep up with the commitments they are making to the current way of doing things. And I can't help thinking that for every two laptops you buy for £1000 each, you could have 3 desktop machines for £1800 and use the change to buy a printer to share between the 3 machines.

While there would be clear advantages in being able to give each student and member of staff a laptop, and allow them to work with it at home and at school as they please, there simply isn't the money in the pot to pay the price of doing it. One of the biggest frustrations people have at the moment in Educational IT is that there is never enough money in the pot to do what you need. I really don't think switching from desktop machines to a more expensive "laptop for every student" model is likely to help this problem, do you?

Robert Moir,
Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP)

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