- Joined
- Feb 20, 2001
This is also in another thread - I thought I had better state it here as well
There has been a lot of talk about getting schools folding, and I have tried to get my school into it. However, after no reply from the authorities via email I decided to install folding on a few of the school machines - 4 or 5 Celly433s and a Celly700. I was told to remove it as there were valid reasons behind it. I would reccomend anyone interested in getting their school participating to read the following. It may not apply to all schools but many parts of it may apply to yours.
The reasons for my school not participating are:
- The firewall is in place to prevent people bringing stuff through the net access. Folding At Home is avoiding this by directly bringing stuff through the proxy server. If someone else modified the program or used the same technique then potentially dangerous stuff could enter the network and would cause havoc. I have seen, so far, thirty school computers with antivirus programs - and many of them don't work and are outdated.
- Folding @ Home is not commonly used or known by anyone but me in the school - it is therefore not necessarily safe in the eyes of other people eg - in case it has spyware, viruses etc.
- These two reasons are vrey important as we are on the same network as 11 other high schools and a lot of government and council offices and institutions. Once something got in it could bring down all the school computers, libraries, council offices etc.
- The network at the school is already slow. Anything else transmitting or recieving stuff will slow it down even more. Until we get the switched hubs (that we have been waiting on for months) 300 odd computers on a 10Mbit network is pathetically slow. The network crawls as it is and having these three hundred computers all sending and recieving data will be impractical.
- Our net connection sucks. The bottleneck, the link between the school and the proxy servers for the area, is around 384kbps. Thats 384 Kilobits btw. Ouch.
- The work units would not finish in time, except on the faster machines. We have about a hundred Celly433s and PII/350s. These will be on part time and never finish work. We also have around thirty Celly700s and a load of Macs, or which a handful run OS X. These are all turned on to be used and off when not in use.
- Leaving the systems on overnight is impractical and risky. The school is often used outside of school hours - chances are that someone would turn them off. The cleaners are instructed to turn off all PCs. It is also a major fire risk.
- You are talking about kids here. Chances are that half of the folding clients will be turned off/tweaked/mucked up/uninstalled.
The only PC folding at the school is in an office behind a locked door, monitor off and the machine is nearly silent. It is not due to be serviced for a year or two. The member of staff who uses the machine doesn't mind it running, and she objects to any of the areas schools IT dept staff altering it or using it. It folds most of the week but is off at the weekend for safety reasons. It has, however turned in a couple of WUs so it seems to do OK.
When attempting to fold at a school you need the permission of the following people. Its all no problem keeping it hush-hush but when something goes wrong you can be in deep trouble:
- The person(s)/department that uses the machine on a day to day basis.
- The person(s)/department responsible for the maintenance of the machine.
- The person(s)/department who provide the access to the internet/maintain the firewall
I was instructed firmly to remove folding at home from all the computers maintained by the school, and threatened with action by the school administration unless it was removed. This was not the personal wish of the systems administrator but it was necessary as, if the client was discovered, not only me, but the systems administrator and indeed the headmaster (us translation: principal) could be liable to action by the people responsible for the PCs (based outwith the school). The worst case scenario could be that I am excluded/diciplined, the systems administrator diciplined for letting it happen and the PCs could be rejected and the authorities may refuse to maintain them.
Please be careful - I hope that you get as many PCs folding as you can. However, I would rather see 1GHz added properly and with permission than 10Ghz added with the risk of someone facing trouble.
Thank you.
David
There has been a lot of talk about getting schools folding, and I have tried to get my school into it. However, after no reply from the authorities via email I decided to install folding on a few of the school machines - 4 or 5 Celly433s and a Celly700. I was told to remove it as there were valid reasons behind it. I would reccomend anyone interested in getting their school participating to read the following. It may not apply to all schools but many parts of it may apply to yours.
The reasons for my school not participating are:
- The firewall is in place to prevent people bringing stuff through the net access. Folding At Home is avoiding this by directly bringing stuff through the proxy server. If someone else modified the program or used the same technique then potentially dangerous stuff could enter the network and would cause havoc. I have seen, so far, thirty school computers with antivirus programs - and many of them don't work and are outdated.
- Folding @ Home is not commonly used or known by anyone but me in the school - it is therefore not necessarily safe in the eyes of other people eg - in case it has spyware, viruses etc.
- These two reasons are vrey important as we are on the same network as 11 other high schools and a lot of government and council offices and institutions. Once something got in it could bring down all the school computers, libraries, council offices etc.
- The network at the school is already slow. Anything else transmitting or recieving stuff will slow it down even more. Until we get the switched hubs (that we have been waiting on for months) 300 odd computers on a 10Mbit network is pathetically slow. The network crawls as it is and having these three hundred computers all sending and recieving data will be impractical.
- Our net connection sucks. The bottleneck, the link between the school and the proxy servers for the area, is around 384kbps. Thats 384 Kilobits btw. Ouch.
- The work units would not finish in time, except on the faster machines. We have about a hundred Celly433s and PII/350s. These will be on part time and never finish work. We also have around thirty Celly700s and a load of Macs, or which a handful run OS X. These are all turned on to be used and off when not in use.
- Leaving the systems on overnight is impractical and risky. The school is often used outside of school hours - chances are that someone would turn them off. The cleaners are instructed to turn off all PCs. It is also a major fire risk.
- You are talking about kids here. Chances are that half of the folding clients will be turned off/tweaked/mucked up/uninstalled.
The only PC folding at the school is in an office behind a locked door, monitor off and the machine is nearly silent. It is not due to be serviced for a year or two. The member of staff who uses the machine doesn't mind it running, and she objects to any of the areas schools IT dept staff altering it or using it. It folds most of the week but is off at the weekend for safety reasons. It has, however turned in a couple of WUs so it seems to do OK.
When attempting to fold at a school you need the permission of the following people. Its all no problem keeping it hush-hush but when something goes wrong you can be in deep trouble:
- The person(s)/department that uses the machine on a day to day basis.
- The person(s)/department responsible for the maintenance of the machine.
- The person(s)/department who provide the access to the internet/maintain the firewall
I was instructed firmly to remove folding at home from all the computers maintained by the school, and threatened with action by the school administration unless it was removed. This was not the personal wish of the systems administrator but it was necessary as, if the client was discovered, not only me, but the systems administrator and indeed the headmaster (us translation: principal) could be liable to action by the people responsible for the PCs (based outwith the school). The worst case scenario could be that I am excluded/diciplined, the systems administrator diciplined for letting it happen and the PCs could be rejected and the authorities may refuse to maintain them.
Please be careful - I hope that you get as many PCs folding as you can. However, I would rather see 1GHz added properly and with permission than 10Ghz added with the risk of someone facing trouble.
Thank you.
David
