Internet is a resource knowing who is using it is powerful.

I assume you mistyped, since that is the one thing a proxy simply can’t do.”

Sigh… 27 times a day students/teachers/users will be thinking about something else like the hot date they plan after school. They check the weather/schedules/e-mail multiple times each, thousands of times a day for the school. Rather than fetching that rapidly changing stuff a thousand times, set a process on the router/cache/filter to download the hot pages once every hour/15 minutes or whatever. Where I am the main weather page changes once per hour on the hour. I could download it at 1 minute after the hour, for example. Then those thousand requests become half a dozen. I can examine logs to decide what needs this treatment but it’s usually stuff like weather, hockey scores, popular social sites, news etc.

One argument not to do this is that with hundreds of users, there will be a large number of sites but it still works because by sorting/counting I can determine the few most popular, and these folks are part of a small community with a lot of common interests. It is often surprising what one finds on a server’s logs. One time I spent a lot of effort keeping boys off all kinds of undesirable sites with violence, drugs, really bad stuff but the girls almost without fail were drawn to a single site with a very pink background all about clothes and fashion. I can see a few friends picking a single site to fuss over but this was virtually every girl from Grade 7 to 10. The older girls just wanted to do e-mail… Of course there were lots of educational things they were supposed to be doing but these others were constantly on their minds.

For grown-ups obviously things like FaceBook are extremely popular. I have met ladies who keep FB open in some window all day long. Pictures of the new baby in town or the party last night will be downloaded on nearly every PC in the building. Whatever could be cached from those sites should as it will save many MB per day. Some schools dealt with these problems by having a “white list” but that was really a nuisance because a lot of FLOSS sites were not considered “white”.

Caching is an ancient technique known to reduce bandwidth requirements while speeding access. It works in a CPU, a PC and a server. It really helps reduce the effects of bottlenecks like the ISP. When I arrived at my last school ISP bandwidth for the school was ~100KB/s, absolutely pitiful. When I left it was as high as 3MB/s. We also went from ~20 PCs working to ~80 so the average bandwidth per PC changed from 5 KB/s to 350 KB/s. The LAN was way faster being 1gbit/s at the switch to 100 mbits/s to most PCs. Whatever was cached at the router was bandwidth saved and snappier service. Some of my critics harp on my singular focus on GNU/Linux but I do pay attention to everything I can control to improve price/performance. In most cases adding GNU/Linux and optimizing the layout of the LAN and servers does wonders. I was once in a school that had moved its server from a computer lab to a closet. In the meantime they left the old switch with just 100 mbits/s to the servers… I swapped switches for an instantly snappier system using gigabit/s between servers and switch. That cost nothing but an hour of my time but was totally worthwhile. The school had been run that way for several years all the while people bitching about the network. The network was fine but the guy who made that move was not thinking of the big picture. He did not even bother to make a diagram and so could not see it. He also could only manage to have 17 PCs (14 usually) working in the old lab. By GNU/Linux magic I got 24 working. Neither of these moves needed any equipment to be purchased just putting what they already had to best use.

Reality I want the staff to be able to take Lan cable out back of thin and plug-in business issued laptop if the thin is the only desk on hand. They then can use the screen keyboard and mouse from the thin with the laptop. When the laptop is not there that work space is still usable. I have done thins with KVM switchs before just so the screen keyboard and mouse did not have to be disconnected and reconnected as much.

Of course even that my design had thins. I could also swap those for desktop machines or laptops are required. The design describe is designed to change with need.

ch
–Where I live, DSL speeds of 50 Mbit/s down- and 1 Mbit/s upstream are quite common.–

Please note the word common. Can you be sure that the building you are placing the start up will have that. The answer is no you cannot. You cannot be 100 percent sure that the dsl will be stable not at first.

–I have set up Asterisk once, and while it is definitively powerful it is surely not for the novice.–
http://www.zentyal.org/ Have you tried it in this. Its designed for the novice.

Asterisk how much pain it is. Is direct linked to the interface you use to install and configure it. You will find the knowledge required to operate a zentyal quite min as well. Same with the other Linux Distributions designed for small business the 56 dollar manual is very straight forwards for it.

ch Computer prices are basically the same in the USA, Australia and EU when converted to same currency. So the prices due to Euro being worth more drop. So in ground money 5000 Euro is more than 5000 AUD or USD. By quite a bit. Its closer to the 5000 Euro is closer 6000 figure.

Can you be sure that the start-up income will be stable no you cannot. So can you be sure they will have the money at the end of the year to pay for the cloud subscription. No you cannot.

zentyal can manage full blown windows machines. If you are using full machines. 500 dollar boxes is more than enough.

ch 5 in office thins have and advantage as well. They don’t walk out the office never to be seen again. Startup laptop sound good. Laptops are only safe to bring in once you know you can trust the staff. Or you might never see them again.

A start-up having its laptops stolen or lost could break the start-up due to lack of funds to replace them.

ch remember the servers I picked are designed to go through solo to 30 to 50 users without any issue.

500 dollar servers can safely go 25 users. Not quite the level of responsiveness I like on thins. Same I could drop 16 port 1G network out and used a 48 port 100 Mbs. But again this is because I like my thin clients to truly respond almost instantly.

So some of my size is personal prefence.

Remember you desktop do cost more than my thins. Because my 200(thin, headset)+200(screen, keyboard mouse) includes doing the wiring. 75 dollars worth of cable per thin. That gives a bit of room for some wall sockets.

ch
–Outsourcing the server side to the cloud means you don’t have to worry about the servers. I’m sure that even allowing for marketing-speak, “professional-grade cloud storage” will include things like backups, UPS and redundancy.–

You miss something you still have to UPS the modem. The laptops contain a battery so basically have there own UPS.

In my case my thins can run on the UPS used for the servers. Because really thins don’t take that much. Most power hungry thing in my setup is the hard-drives in the servers.

Having everything in the cloud is find if you can connect to it. A good quality UPS will reduce modem/router failure rate. ch if you don’t go a UPS you go a spare modem/router. In your setup do you think the business will be able to wait while someone goes and gets a Modem/router.

In my setup either server fails and it keeps on going. As long as I don’t lose the switch right?

Even if I do lose the switch I can still connect up 2 clients by the modem. The switch in modem is backup plan. The screens from 2 thinclients could be connected to the server in pinch as well. I also could have used the extra 500 to use the two servers as seats.

ch mine is a high grade solution. Your is in a lot of way second rate. You have missed what is required. UPS and doubling up modem/router is kinda required to give the same dependency.

Redundancy requirement does not magically disappear because you go cloud ch. Different things need Redundancy. Modem/router with cloud requires Redundancy and UPS. Same with backups. What if one month you cannot pay your all your on-line bills.

My solution what you have paid at the start is it. Libreoffice might not be the best solution ch but it keeps on working.

ch really I would not be sleeping well with everything depending on a fritz box that could be harmed by power surge or phone power spike(lightning) with no backup plan.

Once I go across 5 users with servers I should consider having a backup switch on shelf.

ch
–The five employees of a company are more likely to use quite different sites since they probably do different things. IMHO, setting up a dedicated server just for internet caching in such a modest setting would be a waste.–

Really central management 5 employees are normally your core staff. For answering calls from customers planning jobs and so on.

I did not say dedicated. NAS and Caching normally one. The fact that the employees will be going different directions all the time is why having a decent NAS is important. Uploading large files to the Internet take for ever. Being able to drop into the office and dump the file into a folder on a local NAS box saves a lot of resources.

This is also where cloud fails. Sending large files up and down is painful.

–Where I live, DSL speeds of 50 Mbit/s down- and 1 Mbit/s–

Really that does not compare to 100Mbit/s cabling to a local NAS for getting a file off a laptop. 1G networking its going to take bugger all time to get the files around compare to that. Waiting for files to be copied between staff because you are using cloud is a real common waste of resources.

Really I am not a fan of wifi. I have had too many issues because of it. From modems crashing because someone is trying to break in. To finding you don’t have Internet traffic because someone has cracked the wifi and is downloading like mad.

I personally prefer for business to use modem/routers without wifi and to use wifi access points. Reason you can turn the wifi access points off if you suspect problem.

ch this is a case you are in business you have to allow for attempted sabotage. What you get away with in home should not really be done in business. Wifi and Modem router in one you should not really find in business.

Wifi in laptops is so much of a problem.

ch you just able to get inside but the problem is you solution is missing key parts to be able to work in the real world effectively. A NAS of some form is not avoidable.

The whole idea of presentation graphics is to watch them, Mr. Pogson. Certainly the creation thereof is either done by some fairly talented folk or via some automated process. But everyone is expected to ba able to view the results and interact with them in real time using their notebooks or tablets, even their phones.

Graphics != video however. Business types are often not very geeky and don’t make their own videos. They may well have someone on the payroll to work with video but I can’t imagine any business requiring everyone to do video. Some thin clients have the bandwidth to do decent video but the bottleneck would be at the server most likely. That’s why I discourage video. In schools, the proportion of users doing video at any instant has been small. A lab or classroom can easily use a projector giving the teacher control. The most “business-like” operations in schools are the administration/office set and I have never seen any of them do video as a part of work. Play is another matter…

You are mired in the past, Mr. Pogson. Complex, at-a-glance sorts of business graphics are all the rage and have been for years now. Commercial use of the iPad is predicated on its use for displaying these sorts of presentation graphics. Information on this is everywhere. Here is just a sample to get you started.

- Outsourcing the server side to the cloud means you don’t have to worry about the servers. I’m sure that even allowing for marketing-speak, “professional-grade cloud storage” will include things like backups, UPS and redundancy.

- My solution needs much less IT knowledge, so the company might not even have to hire a professional (although it probably wouldn’t hurt). Set up the FritzBox according to the manual (it comes with a programm for your PC to make things even easier), set up five accounts on MSO365, download and install MSO, and off you go. I have set up Asterisk once, and while it is definitively powerful it is surely not for the novice.

- Oh, and BTW: MSO is still much better than LO, especially for businesses.

Please note, too, that the Fritzbox includes the DSL modem, LAN switch, Wifi, DECT base, ISDN, router and firewall. You might replace the latter two with your server (although I prefer an appliance for that), but you would still need some or all of the other stuff.

In short: In my scenario, the hardware costs about as much as your thin clients, and MSO365 costs about as much as the servers Mr O recommended. (Because of the importance of IT you pointed out, I wouldn’t sleep that well if there was only one $500-PC substituting for a server that everything relies upon.)

I will give you that your solution would give more flexibility to those who want to **** around with their servers – but that’s not that common in small businesses, I think.

That’s pretty good with cloud but you need to compare tomatoes with tomatoes. I would use a $100 thin client for business use, assuming video was not big with business applications, and a GNU/Linux terminal server costing $500 ( a little extra RAM and better storage). That’s a neutral change in cost but a huge increase in performance. Performance is what users care about and you can get it much more cheaply using GNU/Linux on terminal server and clients. Put your network and telephone stuff on the terminal server too, saving your €209. That savings is probably trivial yet the performance increase would be dramatic. I know. I have done such tradeoffs in schools many times. For five people one can do a lot with a LAMP stack on the terminal server with zero network lag, just the screen refresh time. Putting a good RAID on the terminal server would be a good use for the €209. Then you could have more heads seeking independently, perhaps one for each user and still with huge caching paying dividends.

IMHO this technology works better for non-video IT from 1 user to thousands and costs less per person the more people you add to it. The break-even point is probably around two or three seats. It’s a no-brainer for a school or small or medium business with scarce IT resources. A large business that does not use such technology wherever it fits is insane.

One of the services cloud providers should sell is proper backups with versioning/dates so that deleted documents could be brought back by administrators. It is a valuable service and the cloud provider can do it more cheaply and independently of local personalities. That is really important because the disgruntled employee could be in charge of local backups… Disgruntled IT people can do a lot of damage for their size and a contractual obligation of cloud providers to keep readonly copies of stuff for x years could be priceless in times of disaster. The cost of IT is only a tiny fraction of the cash flow of many businesses yet a disaster in IT could shut down an operation without proper backup. Insurance that repairs the damage is worth a lot more than a bit of cash.

Mr Pogson, my comment had a context that you obviously missed: I was specifically addressing Mr O’s “challenge” to outfit a company with five employees on a budget.
- Where I live, DSL speeds of 50 Mbit/s down- and 1 Mbit/s upstream are quite common.
- Your students would probably use the same sites quite a lot, and there would be more than five of them. The five employees of a company are more likely to use quite different sites since they probably do different things. IMHO, setting up a dedicated server just for internet caching in such a modest setting would be a waste. (And in my example the other uses for a server are already catered for to the extent that Mr O mentioned them.)

BTW, Windows Vista and above preload your favorite applications after start-up, if they are idle, which seems a perfectly good use of otherwise empty memory for me – and typically more useful than preloading webpages (which usually are much smaller than applications).

Finally:
a caching proxy server is very useful [for] reducing bandwidth for frequently changed content.

I assume you mistyped, since that is the one thing a proxy simply can’t do.