Trust-No-One

The apps I understand, and also where this "hybrid" model comes in to run these apps locally. But where does this user's data get stored, typically? Does Johnny's 400MB video stay local to that computer? Sent to the cloud? Does it get backed up? How will this affect other users? I'm not trying to discredit your reasoning, just trying to understand the logistics from a practical point of view for real-world scenarios. I thought the whole idea of a thin client system was that access terminals were low-cost, low-power devices to run anything from anywhere - everything was on the server. But with the introduction of the hybrid model, this obviously mandates that thin clients aren't as thin any more, which likely impacts power usage and also cost. In which case, why not just use traditional fat clients for what the difference is worth? The costings I've seen for hybrid TS devices are twice as much as our fat clients. On a slightly related note, how well do your thin client/hybrid systems run over a wireless connection?

Local paper The Northern Echo published a snippet about this in the readers' letters column on Saturday. Flagship foul-up? (From The Northern Echo)

Exactly. Consider this analogy. Let's presume you are forced to buy a new car to replace your current ageing, but fully-functioning car. You are told that your new car is shiny, all-singing, all-dancing and will cost a lot of money. But the crucial part is, you don't get to see the car, and you don't get to test drive the car, and you know very little about it. Yet you must buy it otherwise X, Y and Z happens. Except the new car hasn't passed its MOT yet Reminds me of the old Ford Model T thing - you can have it in any colour as long as it's black.

I think this is exactly what is happening here. If it wasn't for networking amongst ourselves, us IT folk in Durham would be completely in the dark about BSF - communication from above about it is VERY lacking.

Lets put it this way i wouldn't like to be a student in this college at the moment studying my A levels with the systems going up and down like a well known ladies drawers! Its a business model with schools tacked onto the end as an after thought. Even though we are led to believe that with the layer 3 technology which is being used the thin client footprint is 35K, what happens to the large file sizes passed over the WAN by up to 30,000 students who log in every hour on the hour and off again surely it must create bottlenecks somewhere. Add on the staff and it equates in total to approx 40,000 which is a huge number to divide into the bandwidth even when they are putting 2 x 100Mb lines into every school i't just don't add up real time with the large file sizes. Then there is the flash and video which is causing the major problems with heavy 3D applications and video editing software, I would have liked personally to see a centralised VTLE with a single sign on for all users which would have allowed all students and staff the ability from all schools to collaborate and share good practise even in the new schools instead of forcing schools down a one shoe fits all scenario which doesn't allow for innovation unless you pay through the nose for it. Don't get me wrong I am all in favour of new schools but at what cost to the public purse through taxes and for what, so large companies can make profit at the taxpayers expense again. Mark my words it will all end in tears for some students as their T & L is disrupted for the sake of proving a point. I personally wish that Durham LA would let everyone into the picture as it looks more and more like a vendetta against the Durham schools IT professionals for doing a good job with the limited budgets that they are given.

@AngryITGuy Thanks, interesting.

Would that be the two links, using the same connection technology, running through the same pipe, to the same local exchange/access hub?

... and all of this over the WAN to a centralised "data centre". How reliable is the WAN link? Can it sustain the required bandwidth? What happens when any part of this fails - how much of the IT facilities are lost? How is it backed up and how are restores managed? So many questions, so few of them answered properly, if at all. It's no wonder they're going back to a working legacy system. The way the BSF system works, it was doomed from the start in my opinion. It's ironic that the DJ website promotes following them on Twitter, yet DurhamNet (or whatever name they have now assumed - The Infrastrucutre Team?) have it blocked.

I'd prefer not to say too much; but I think the schools that have received the document I'm referring to will know what I'm on about.

Anybody had any correspondence today/yesterday from Derwentside?

Our plans are to use Moodle in conjunction with Mahara.

@tom_newton, @mounters Thank you. We will too.

@tom_newton Is this the minimum recommended by Becta? I wonder if DurhamNET's filtering is Becta-accredited?

I may be wrong - they may have changed the way things work since I pieced bits and peices together over the years. Without working for DurhamNET as an engineer or getting information from them directly, we can only make educated guesses as to how things are set up, what goes where and how things work.

Removing the 'Magic Box' is probably just a case of replacing it with a router that has the same IP address configuration on the WAN and LAN. Of course, this is just the IP routing part of it - it would be sensible to combine this with filtering/proxy in one box (for example - Smoothwall, IPCop, Linux+iptables+Squid). As HTTP traffic is routed through DurhamNET after it's left the Magic Box, it passes through their transparent cache servers (also running their squid red-page blocking functionality) so that's why you still get the block page.