[Server-devel] OLPC Australia XS concerns

[Sridhar Dhanapalan]

I think my biggest technical concerns in XS-land are twofold:

  * we need the XS to behave well on an *existing* network (i.e.
single interface), without trying to be a gateway or duplicating core
network services (DNS, DHCP, etc.)
  * while other XS efforts are keen to add features, we want to be as
trim as possible

We started the XS-AU when it had become clear that XS development had
slowed. We could find no alternative that satisfied our needs, and I
felt it better to go our own way rather than complaining that the XS
didn't meet our particular use case (which seems to be quite different
from other deployments). It's been working very well, and it's quite
low-maintenance for us. We'll need a good reason to jump ship.

We've been working on a prototype "XS Lite", which is essentially an
XS-AU with everything except ejabberd stripped away. Our deployments
are done at the classroom-level; a teacher receives XOs for the
children in their class once they have completed the necessary
training. We would like to provide a simple server with that
allocation of XOs. This means that the server needs to be low-cost and
easy to implement (plug-and-play). We are assuming that there is *no*
technical expertise available at the school.

The server doesn't have to be very capable. Anything that requires
registration won't work for us as the turnover of teachers and
students is too high. We don't need Moodle or anything similar, since
such services are already provided on the state education network.
Since it's based on the XS-AU, it can be 'upgraded' to a full XS with
some yum commands.

Given the modest requirements, I think an XO would be suitable
hardware. They are cheap and reliable, and we already have them in
stock. As a standalone collaboration server, the XO's WLAN can be the
AP. If we need to connect to the school network, we can use a
USB2Ethernet adapter. This will also allow the server to leverage the
other APs in the school. What's important is that we need to be
tolerant of multiple schoolservers on the network, potentially one per
class.


Sridhar


Sridhar Dhanapalan
Technical Manager
One Laptop per Child Australia
M: +61 425 239 701
E: sridhar at laptop.org.au
A: G.P.O. Box 731
     Sydney, NSW 2001
W: www.laptop.org.au