RUCA: Research on challenges in ICT infrastructure for large-scale deployment of educational laptops

This paper describes the RUCA project, the work done on its second phase and preliminary work for the third phase. RUCA is part of the UCA ("Um Computador por Aluno" A Computer per Student) Project, and deals with the technical aspects of it (in contrast to the pedagogical aspects of deploying laptops at schools, covered by UCA). It began as a project to study the mesh network capabilities of OLPC\´s XO laptop, but evolved to a project with studies the challenges of installing and operating the network infrastructure needed for such a project. The paper touches on aspects of other deployments visited by the RUCA team: the CEIBAL project in Uruguay and the Magalhatildees project in Portugal. The visits pointed to the similar needs found in all the deployments, but also show the lack of research on infrastructure, which is extremely important for letting those projects reach full potential. RUCA 2 focused on the challenges for installing wireless and wired network infrastructure in Brazilian public schools. Due to Brazil\´s physical size and population, which demand a large number of schools, and the way responsibilities are divided among its different levels of government, the task of installing and maintaining the wireless network infrastructure may be left to school staff. To help this task, a tool was developed for site survey, and research was done on alternative technologies to help wireless coverage. The next project, RUCA 3 will focus on the challenge of operating a network which will be ten times larger than the current Internet deployment in Brazil in terms of users. The requirements for the tool that will be developed for updating, managing and monitoring the network using the PlanetLab software platform are also described in this paper.