School server

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When we deploy one laptop per child, we must also provide the infrastructure necessary to make these laptops useful. These laptops were never meant to be completely self-sufficient. Instead, they require periodic connectivity to centralized services and shared resources.

These persistent services required by OLPC laptops could conceivably be implemented in a fully distributed manner. They are currently provided more economically by a centralized local resource, the school server.

The functions provided by this server are open to debate, but at a minimum they include internet communication and storage resources to the school's wireless mesh.

A single school server is designed to support roughly one hundred students. Multiple school servers may be closely located to support larger schools. An open area for discussion is how to combine the management interfaces to support these distributed collections of servers.

Currently, the School server is described by these documents:

• The Server Specification describes the School Server hardware and software platform
• Server Services described the services supported by the School Server
• Server Discussion describes services and enhancements possibly supported by the School Server
• Short Term Server Questions is a discussion of issues surrounding the immediate deployment of school servers
• Trial1 Server Software describes the proposed first revision of the server software

See also

• School server/School district networks
• Bitfrost Security and Identity model
• Thin client