The new Airport Extreme is something that all schools who are using wireless networks have craved for. One of the biggest issues in schools, are classes of students in a small area accessing the network through just a couple of wireless access points. If students are logging onto a server this can be extremely slow due to the lack of throughput (data transfer) from a lmited wireless bandwidth. A compromise is always needed to improve the connection such as having local logins rather than server homes, or making a specific computer image to make the best use of the network that is often going against what you are trying to achieve with technology, reducing what is copied to the server in the case of OSX server, you can choose which folders are sychronised while Windows profiles are a different matter (if anyone wants more on this subject just make a comment).
What Apple has done here is kind of a slap in the face to a ratification process by a bureaucratic body of self importance. Thats why this is called 802.11n draft. Anyway Apple has managed to make it compatible with a,b,g depending on how you set the station up. If you just turn it on it is only able to be used by b and g cards until you do two things. One - you have to install a piece of software to enable the ‘n’ part of your wireless card if you have a new enough Mac. Two - from what I can decipher from technical information ( I’ll know soon enough when I set some up) you use channels 36 to 64 in the 5 GH range for the ‘n’ protocol while still using channels 1 to 13 in the 2.4GH range for b and g.
The main thing here is that the n protocol is up to 5 times faster and has twice the range than its predecessors. No major wireless hardware provider has released anything like this yet because they can’t make a backward compaitble device due to the vast kinds of airport cards around. Apple has decided to not worry to much about that as its own hardware works with it. If you have a generic n capable card you may and probably will have problems using this protocol.
Hi Steve, the new AirPort Extreme is potentially a very useful device for school network support managers. It prompts quite a shift in the ways schools will use their network. As far as schools showing forward thinking - the adoption of the forthcoming 802.11n standard should be high on their to-do list. One consideration when factoring in the cost of Intel based Apple hardware will be the as yet undecided cost for 802.11n wireless card upgrade. At the moment it seems the price will be nominal at US$2:
The possibility of students working outside or moving between classes with wireless access to a server full of relevant multimedia resources with a set of iPhones is very exciting to me also.
I’d definitely be interested in hearing more about the ease/difficulty we will have in integrating Windows profiles into this environment.
Windows profiles (these are the files that are copied onto the server or files sent back and forth while logging in from a Windows machine) lack the same precise tools that workgroup manager in OSX server have for dealing with wireless logins. There are scripts and other software that you can use to help with reducing the profile. Thats not to say Apple is not immune as some of its software natively bypasses the workgroup manager rules that you set.
Lets have a look at Office for instance as this is often used by schools under both operating systems. All office documents make a temporary duplicate of the file and this is on the server for network logins. This file can be huge if it is powerpoint and both operating systems suffer under wireless conditions. There is a lot to be said about old digital cameras as their file sizes were quite small while most newish cameras create pictures that are 4 to 5Mb in size now. A few of these in Word can slow it down due to the continual transfer of this information across the wireless network.
You basically can’t use programs like Garageband, iMovie, and to some extent iPhoto with wirless accounts but a much faster adapter will improve things although iMovie and iDVD will never be usable until the connection hits the gigabyte stage.
Windows profiles create desktop, documents, pictures, temporary files (heaps of these), etc on the server and the server files always take precedence over the computer files which already causes issues for a lot of teachers when their Windows login does not synchronise properly. Profiles are becoming so large for many teachers that normal cable connections are struggling to manage. Many staff are always being told not to put lots of files in particular places because of these profile issues. I say what is the point in having this kind of login if it is a pain for staff. I could answer this but I have already said a lot.
Hopefully the new windows server when ever it shows up will have a solution to its profile issues.
Apple also have bugs in its sychronising as even if you only ask the Documents folder to sychronise it works for a while and then the music folder suddenly appears on the server and so on. So hopefully Leopard will address this.
The wireless world is not an easy place for network logins, if only students had their own laptop.
You raise some important considerations for network maintennance in schools Steve, especially those using Windows profiles for student/staff movements on the network. In reducing user profile size network speeds may suffer a little less, and it seems certain the more exact profiling of an OSX workgroup manager is more suitable to a modern schools storage and transportation needs. I would have thought that by now be heading in a direction where students do have their own notebooks so that the cumbersome file sizes of the multimedia work is not shared across a network. In some of the 1-to-1 programmes I am sure this set-up has proven more favourable.
On another tract for a while now I have been pushing the use of digital cameras in schools of less than 4megapixels simply because they can print in good quality up to A4 and higher megapixel cameras are really only of use if A3 is required. Increasingly, some of the digital cameras can produce decent quality 16:9 QuickTime video for easy import into iMovie etc. These still/video devices ensure the content of student work comes to the fore not the weightiness of the tool.