XO Laptop In Uruguay

by Technocrat.net

The childrens' XO Laptop has been deployed to the first schools in Uruguay. Here is a nice blog writeup from one of the OLPC folks including pictures of the event.

..some details on the servers and wireless access part of these deployments:.."Uruguay is using three kinds of access points for blanketing the deployment schools and villages. The Wavion WS410 provides heavy-hitting coverage with six radios and six beam-forming antennae, while custom-assembled Mikrotik R52 routerboards are used as school access points.

The Mikrotik devices allow up to three radios and antennae to be plugged in easily, accommodating quite a bit of variation in school size. Finally, BelAir 100 nodes are used for meshing. Schools too small for even a one-radio Mikrotik AP are using Linksys WRT54g devices.

All schools have Internet access through DSL, and Ceibal struck an interesting cooperation with the water and cellular utility companies which lets them plant wireless access points on existing water and cell towers. In the village of Cardal, for instance, there’s a Wavion AP atop a cell tower, with a point-to-point link to the school roof which terminates at the school server connected to DSL."..more at the link.

Amazing how they can get decent wireless coverage with such a small amount of actual gear.

Anyway, glad to see these machines getting out there in numbers now. Elsewhere on the olpc wiki they are saying the production lines are running full tilt and smoothly now. Pretty soon, maybe by a year or so (whatever, eventually and "soon"), this could be the number one linux distro out there.