April 1996 — Features
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Tips & Tricks for K-12 Educational LANs
As a precaution, locate the file server away from the rest of the room, preferably in another room located next to the lab, like a locked closet. A file server sitting next to printers or computers that students use invites curious eyes and hands. Whatever you do, don't use this closet as a storage room. Allow the room's air to circulate. And don't pile supplies, like boxes of paper, around it. Later, when you need access, you don't want to have to move a lot of other things out of the way.
If you can't keep the server physically away from children then use a password-protected screen blanker. Make sure it's something simple; the animated graphics in most commercial screen savers will tie up the CPU and eat into network performance.
Use a big hard drive for the server. I like to have applications load off the server. It makes the computer "universal" so any child can run any application from any computer.
While networkable software may cost more initially, as the network grows, you can add additional users at no additional cost. In all cases check your software license to see how many computers can legally use it. The Administrator function of networks makes it easy to lock applications to a certain number of users.
Others prefer loading applications onto the local hard drive for speed reasons. In my lab, I use a mixture of both. I try out the application on the network and if it d'esn't work or is too slow I load it onto local drives.
If you can, buy only networkable software. It lets you use less expensive computers as workstations, and they won't need a large hard drive since only the files needed to start the workstation and networked programs are loaded.
Set up applications to install over the network even if you can't run them on the network. Every application I've ever tested on the Mac can be setup to install over AppleShare. This saves you from having to drag around a bunch of floppies to each machine.[2] When installing software, particularly new system software, install it on only one machine and monitor that machine for problems for several days.
