[Server-devel] New section for Nepal -- Network Topology

[Tony Pearson]

Martin,
Thanks for the pointer.  It appears the OLPC plan is to have this new XS 
machine ready by November, but Greg is working on plan specific to Nepal 
for this April.  Therefore, to use your terminology, we will plan to use 
the "XSX" from off-the-shelf parts to get started.

Greg,
I have made updates (kept your stuff as comments in case you want to make 
further updates).  I chose "Red Zone" and "Green Zone" but realize we 
could probably call this "Teacher Zone" and "Student Zone" since they are 
separate subnets easily distinguishable by IP address. 

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:School_Server_Specification

I think Nepal has to have some key decisions overall which may affect the 
parameters and settings.

Q1 -- Should we (a) have the ISP Modem connect directly into ONE primary 
server, and have that be a static IP accessible to the internet 
externally, or (b) have a HUB connected to the ISP Modem, and have all 
servers be primary on an internal subnet? 

I can think of pros and cons of each.

My preference is (b) with XS2 dedicated to second graders, XS6 dedicated 
to sixth graders, but each can run both grades if the other fails.  CRON 
could be used to send files back and forth between the two machines for 
backup purposes.

How much control do kids have over which mesh they connect to?  Is it 
possible that a second grader picks a circle on the "Neighborhod view" and 
gets connected to the XS6 system instead?  If this happens, perhaps XS6 
will detect this is a second grader, and re-route him over to XS2 server? 
Or, XS6 can say "Please select a different mesh" if it detects a second 
grader trying to access.

Here is where I think some "client side" logic would be appropriate.  For 
second graders, a file is installed on their XO that identifies that 
laptop as belonging to a second grader, and for sixth graders, a different 
file is installed.  This could be the "home page" they use to access from 
the BROWSE activity. 

The alternative is that XS2 is the master Moodle database, file 
repository, etc. and CRON would send its files to XS6 nightly.  In this 
case, XS6 is in read-only mode for both classes, but can be turned into 
read/write mode if XS2 fails.






Tony Pearson
Senior Storage Consultant, IBM System Storage?
Telephone: +1 520-799-4309 |  tie 321-4309 |  Cell: +1 520 990-8669
email: tpearson at us.ibm.com |  GSA: http://tucgsa.ibm.com/~tpearson
Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage 
AKA: 990tony Paravane, eightbar specialist 


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