VCL and K12

[Anu Chirinos <an...@fiu.edu>]

Hello,

We are looking into providing VCL services to our community's middle and high schools. My concern is with the network between FIU and these schools. Where other universities are proving this type service, what kind of network connectivity do you have to those end users? Are they using just a commodity network, or is there other special considerations?

Thanks,

Anu Chirinos
Assistant Director - Enterprise Systems
Florida International University
Office: 305-348-0275, Cell: 786-712-9025

Re: VCL and K12

[Anu Chirinos <an...@fiu.edu>]

Great, this was wonderful information. I may come back with more questions
once we really start to move on. I did not even think of CIPA.

Anu

On 3/21/13 8:01 PM, "Henry Schaffer" <he...@ncsu.edu> wrote:

>On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Anu Chirinos <an...@fiu.edu> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> We are looking into providing VCL services to our community's middle and
>> high schools. My concern is with the network between FIU and these
>>schools.
>> Where other universities are proving this type service, what kind of
>>network
>> connectivity do you have to those end users? Are they using just a
>>commodity
>> network, or is there other special considerations?
>
>  There are two separate considerations - the networking itself and
>the "filtering".
>
>  The network in the classroom will, these days, usually be wi-fi. If
>every student has a laptop, then the access point needs to be able to
>handle that number of concurrent sessions and many of the
>older/cheaper ones don't do 15 or more all that well - in those cases
>two are needed. Reaching the VCL's web presence (login, reservation,
>...) is just going to a web site. But then the school firewall needs
>to have the RDP ports open to do an RDP session with a Windows image.
>(We have found that not all school technical people are willing to
>open those ports - aargh!)
>
>  Then there is the WAN portion - which needs to have sufficient
>bandwidth - and we've found that 1Mbps or better works - but we're not
>working with very large schools. I suspect that 10Mbps is a better
>place to be. Latency usually isn't a big problem in a decent WAN, but
>on interactive programs such as Geometer's Sketch Pad, when drawing
>one can notice a small lag between the mouse movement and the
>appearance of a line on the screen.
>
>  CIPA (the Child Internet Protection Act) requires each school
>district to decide how they will keep the students from reaching
>inappropriate web sites. So the districts vary all over the place as
>to how this is to be done. The filtering can be done on premises, or
>the traffic can be routed to a remote location (e.g. *your* machine
>room :-) where filtering is done for all the schools you are working
>with (but only if they all buy into this arrangement.) There are a lot
>of providers of filtering software (which has to include a database
>and an update arrangement) - but I'm not up on that. In NC, our local
>REN, MCNC, provides networking to many/most/all of our school
>districts and makes Zscaler filtering available to them, with the
>school districts arranging for their own file which sets the
>parameters for filtering.
>
>--henry schaffer
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Anu Chirinos
>> Assistant Director - Enterprise Systems
>> Florida International University
>> Office: 305-348-0275, Cell: 786-712-9025
>>

Re: VCL and K12

[Henry Schaffer <he...@ncsu.edu>]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Anu Chirinos <an...@fiu.edu> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We are looking into providing VCL services to our community's middle and
> high schools. My concern is with the network between FIU and these schools.
> Where other universities are proving this type service, what kind of network
> connectivity do you have to those end users? Are they using just a commodity
> network, or is there other special considerations?

  There are two separate considerations - the networking itself and
the "filtering".

  The network in the classroom will, these days, usually be wi-fi. If
every student has a laptop, then the access point needs to be able to
handle that number of concurrent sessions and many of the
older/cheaper ones don't do 15 or more all that well - in those cases
two are needed. Reaching the VCL's web presence (login, reservation,
...) is just going to a web site. But then the school firewall needs
to have the RDP ports open to do an RDP session with a Windows image.
(We have found that not all school technical people are willing to
open those ports - aargh!)

  Then there is the WAN portion - which needs to have sufficient
bandwidth - and we've found that 1Mbps or better works - but we're not
working with very large schools. I suspect that 10Mbps is a better
place to be. Latency usually isn't a big problem in a decent WAN, but
on interactive programs such as Geometer's Sketch Pad, when drawing
one can notice a small lag between the mouse movement and the
appearance of a line on the screen.

  CIPA (the Child Internet Protection Act) requires each school
district to decide how they will keep the students from reaching
inappropriate web sites. So the districts vary all over the place as
to how this is to be done. The filtering can be done on premises, or
the traffic can be routed to a remote location (e.g. *your* machine
room :-) where filtering is done for all the schools you are working
with (but only if they all buy into this arrangement.) There are a lot
of providers of filtering software (which has to include a database
and an update arrangement) - but I'm not up on that. In NC, our local
REN, MCNC, provides networking to many/most/all of our school
districts and makes Zscaler filtering available to them, with the
school districts arranging for their own file which sets the
parameters for filtering.

--henry schaffer
>
> Thanks,
>
> Anu Chirinos
> Assistant Director - Enterprise Systems
> Florida International University
> Office: 305-348-0275, Cell: 786-712-9025
>