Elementary teacher iBooks are now two years old, and most of them have not received any software updates or maintenance since they were distributed. There are a number of updates to the operating system and various pieces of installed software that need to be distributed to all machines. In order to do this, we need to re-image the laptops. This process will completely refresh all software on the machines. Technicians will make a backup of each teacher's home folder prior to re-imaging and will restore this data afterwards. We will greatly appreciate any "housecleaning" that you can do ahead of time to remove unneeded files since this will reduce the time needed to complete each laptop.

Rather than collect laptops at the end of the year and keep them all while imaging is done, we will be spending time in each elementary school. Technicians will collect laptops from groups of teachers, complete the imaging process, and return the laptops the same day. Depending on how much data needs to be copied, teachers may even get their laptops back within a couple of hours.

We will start this process at East Auburn on Monday, May 19, and move from there to other schools as quickly as we can. The order will be as follows:

East Auburn
Washburn
Park Ave
Fairview
Sherwood Heights
Walton

My best projection at this point would be that we will complete East Auburn and Washburn by sometime on Tuesday and will begin Park Avenue. From that point, technicians will try to call each school at least a day in advance so that teachers can be sure to have their laptops at school when they arrive.

I appreciate that this process will make many people nervous about their data. Please know that we have lots of experience of this process from similar work at ELHS and AMS. We will make every effort to ensure that no data is lost. Having said that, it's impossible to over-stress the importance of making routine backups of your important data. Computers do break, and sometimes even our best attempts cannot recover information.

Thanks for your help with getting this done as efficiently as possible.

Peter

Followup to the October 13th Announcement -

We can report a significant improvement in our internet bandwidth usage. We are hopeful that all users have noticed that the situation has improved.

The first of the Proxy/Caching Servers has been in place for several weeks, and we have been carefully monitoring high-traffic/high-bandwidth websites and banning those as necessary. This has resulted in approximately 15% less resources consumed. Notice the graph below and compare it to the original graph from October 13th. As you will see, on 11/27/2006 we utilized about 85% of our available resources compared to 99.98% on 10/13/2006.



We would like to thank everyone for patience during this time. We are hopeful that we can reduce our usage further in the coming days and postpone the need for a costly and difficult upgrade to our MSLN internet connection.

Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to
supportcenter@auburnschl.edu

Many users have noticed and reported extremely slow internet access throughout the school day. This is a problem that we are aware of and working on, but the solution is not simple.

Maine School & Library Network is our ISP (Internet Service Provider), and internet access for all of our schools is delivered through our ATM connection at ELHS. At peak times, our connection reaches its limit and slowdowns are noticable for all. As we add more internet-related applications, such as United Streaming, Case-E, etc, the strain on our bandwidth becomes more obvious.

The graph below shows our usage on a typical day. Notice that from about 10am until 2pm, we hit the "red line" several times. These are the points where you will notice the problem.



This is what we are doing to help resolve the situation:

First, we will be deploying "Proxy Servers" or "Caching Servers" that will help reduce bandwidth consumption. These servers will help reduce the load on our internet connection by retaining local copies of frequently accessed content. We expect these servers to be in place within the next few weeks.

Second, some high-bandwidth applications, such as Peer-to-Peer file sharing clients, iTunes, etc, have been restricted from accessing the internet.

Third, we are encouraging all users to access the internet at off-peak times whenever possible. For example - perhaps it is possible to download a large video file to show in your classroom before 10am, or wait until after 2pm to enter data into Case-E. You will find that these tasks are much faster and easier during off-peak hours.

Finally, I should emphasize that our internet connection IS finite, and there is no path to upgrade our current connection. It is not possible to simply call MSLN and have them increase our connection - our ATM connection at ELHS is the highest capacity they can deliver. Switching to a different ISP that can provide more bandwidth is an extremely expensive, difficult, and time-consuming option.

Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to
supportcenter@auburnschl.edu

Did you know that we can set up a web server account for any staff member who wants to publish a school related web site? This would allow simple publishing of pages created using any software. It's as easy as dragging and dropping your pages on to your server folder, (even easier if you're using Apple's iWeb). Click http://www.auburnschl.edu/Technology/Support/web_publishing_signup.html to request an account.

For more information on using Apple's iWeb, go to:
http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/iweb/index.html .

We have upgraded two critical network servers to improve performance accessing the Internet. You may notice that accessing the Web is now a bit faster and more reliable.

These servers handle our DNS (Domain Name System) which converts a web address (such as www.yahoo.com) to an IP address (209.73.186.238).

Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to
supportcenter@auburnschl.edu

This web site will serve as the Technology Services newsletter. Messages will be posted here periodically to keep the Auburn Schools community informed of changes, upgrades, projects, and other information regarding Technology issues in the district.

Topics will be posted as events warrant, so please check back often for current information.

Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to
supportcenter@auburnschl.edu