Winton School

Winton School is very special when it comes to Thin Clients: they are on a very tight budget and yet their enthusiasm for the reliability, versatility and cost-effectiveness of Thin Client networks means that they have achieved so much more than a well-off school could manage with an ordinary PC network.

They’ve always been at the cutting edge, and their network has grown each and every year, without a single machine being taken out of action.

In 1998, Winton had 25 Thin Clients installed into their main ICT area with an NT 3.51 WinCenter server and a Risc PC UNIX-based NetManager. A year later, 15 more Thin Clients were added and the Risc PC NetManager was changed to a CATS-based NetManager server.

In 2001, there was a complete enhancement of the central servers, with load balancing and server redundancy implemented; plus dual power supplies and dual power backup installed.

The system was updated to Windows NT 4 and Citrix WinFrame, and another 50 or so Thin Clients were added. The old NT 3.51 server was converted to run the NetManager 2 software.

In 2002, a further 30 Thin Clients were added and Winton became the Surftec main reference site, and is now a hotbed for concept and product development.

That year, 2002, also saw the launch of remote working: with assistance from Hampshire’s IT Services a secure portal was put in place to allow pupils and staff to access Winton’s Thin Client network from home, allowing pupils to continue their work, utilising all the school’s software at home.

2003 Q1, Microsoft come up with the idea of pushing home working to schools, which was a bit late because Winton were doing it already.

During the rest of 2003: A new print server was installed to cope with the ever-expanding selection of network printers dotted around Winton’s large site; and a new admin server was added to merge two separate networks and to provide teaching staff secure access to the admin network’s facilities from the curriculum network.

A fourth Citrix server complemented those already in place; Windows 2000 installed across the system, and Citrix MetaFrame XPa Feature Release 3 installed, bringing Winton’s entire network of 160 Thin Clients up to the latest standard. NetManager NG was also installed to provide Winton with the very latest web and e-mail filtering.

How long did all those 2003 installations and modifications take? Just three man-days.

Winton’s headteacher, Andrew Smith, has reported listening to the complaints of other school heads bemoaning the unreliability of their networks, whereas his network always runs without problems. But for any school with a properly installed Thin Client network, reliability is never a problem.