USAGE OF THIN-CLIENT / SERVER ARCHITECTURE IN COMPUTER AIDED EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

With the advances of technology, thin-client / server architecture has become popular in multi-user / single-network environments. Thin-client is a user terminal in which the user can login to a domain and run programs by connecting to a remote server. Recent developments in network and hardware technologies (cloud computing, virtualization, etc.) have made the thin-client / server architecture more efficient with respect to total cost of ownership, administration, maintenance, security and power consumption. Therefore, the usage of thin-client / server architecture in computer-aided education has scaled up exponentially since 2010. In this study, we present our architecture in a Public College with 270 user terminals and 9 servers. We describe the planning, design, testing and implementation phases of the new architecture and analyze the outcomes of this implementation in regard to students and staff.