The basic architecture outlined in our original proposal has proved to be sufficiently flexible and expandable to handle the growing demands of teachers and students working with the project. At the school level the architecture is that of a Local Area Network, with an Internet Information Server in each school and access devices in the classrooms.
Servers. School-based servers compensate for an initial low bandwidth to our school sites and to allow for the schools to develop their own information resources. The Internet Information Servers are Unix-based workstations, and we have evolved a system of heterogeneous servers with remote management capabilities.
Clients. Client machines are personal computers. The rapid pace of development for these platforms has made it unnecessary to use more exotic devices such as dedicated X-terminals. User software has been selected to provide a convenient interface, enough flexibility for access from school or home and efficiency to permit expansion within each school. Interoperability was demanded of all applications. Internet connectivity dictated that TCP/IP serve as the underlying network protocol. Users have been provided with a suite of applications for easy access to information and resource dissemination. This setup is fairly standard, except perhaps for our choice of the IMAP protocol for mail. This protocol is better suited than the competing POP protocol for an environment in which there is not one machine for each user.
Older Equipment. Driven both by need and curiosity, we have experimented with the older equipment found at two of our school sites. Although our technical staff was able to provide a usable environment with this equipment, the labor demanded for this task has been excessive. We intend to document this result carefully to determine the true cost of making older equipment function in the environment of a wide area networking project.
Our experience in these areas will be documented in a series of publications.