Hello to anyone reading this.

I am a student at a school in the UK and recently proposed that we implement the BOINC software into our school network, to contribute to projects which would be beneficial, such as to help find cures for diseases.

This idea has been posed to my local council which takes some responsibility for what is allowed to run on educational networks, and if they can make it work, they will allow it. Basically, I need to find out how the BOINC software could be implemented. Here is my idea - could anyone tell me whether this would work, and if so, please give me a guide to make it happen?

Obviously I am not one of the IT administrators at my school, so won't really know any technical detail, but any you could provide would be passed on directly to them.

We have a mixture of Windows XP and Mac computers (although only one Mac lab).

Proposal:

Ideally BOINC would run on all of our school's PCs, over the network.

When the computers are turned on in school, they show the network log-in screen.

Would it be possible to have BOINC run at startup, and begin to process the data before logging in, and then cease to run on any particular computer when a user logs in?

This would mean that it wouldn't interrupt work in any way, as of course, in an educational network that must always take priority.

I know that CPU usage can be set within the program, but, as an example, could the program, automatically run at startup, and take up 20% of the CPU when no user is logged in, and, then cease to operate as soon as a user logs in. (Of course, starting back up when the user logs out.)

Ideally, this would be the case on all PCs which were switched on - BOINC would run at 20% CPU (or whatever), on each PC until a user logged in, and then stop, returning to function when they log out.

Would it also be possible, as we only have a limited internet bandwidth at school, to limit the bandwidth consumption of BOINC to again, say, 20% of available bandwidth, thereby having the bandwidth allocated to it automatically reduced as any other service connects to the internet, so that BOINC only ever takes that 20% of what is available?

I would very much appreciate any answers and guides to these questions, or if not possible, any alternatives which may be appropriate.

Thank you very much,
Jack.

Would it be possible to have BOINC run at startup, and begin to process the data before logging in, and then cease to run on any particular computer when a user logs in?

Yes.

Install BOINC as a service (daemon on the Mac).
Then set it up so it will only do computing when the computer is idle.

I know that CPU usage can be set within the program, but, as an example, could the program, automatically run at startup, and take up 20% of the CPU when no user is logged in, and, then cease to operate as soon as a user logs in. (Of course, starting back up when the user logs out.)

Yes, BOINC comes with a thermal throttling option (In preferences, set the percentage of CPU you want BOINC to use. It will do this by suspending/resuming the application, not give a sustained 20% to the application as that's not possible without a third party throttling program).

Then just use the 'Only do computing while computer is idle" option again.

Would it also be possible, as we only have a limited internet bandwidth at school, to limit the bandwidth consumption of BOINC to again, say, 20% of available bandwidth, thereby having the bandwidth allocated to it automatically reduced as any other service connects to the internet, so that BOINC only ever takes that 20% of what is available?

You can set up per BOINC client how much bandwidth it can use at maximum to upload and download.

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Would it also be possible, as we only have a limited internet bandwidth at school, to limit the bandwidth consumption of BOINC to again, say, 20% of available bandwidth, thereby having the bandwidth allocated to it automatically reduced as any other service connects to the internet, so that BOINC only ever takes that 20% of what is available?

You can set up per BOINC client how much bandwidth it can use at maximum to upload and download.

Additionally, the network traffic can be restricted to a certain time of day.

Excellent, thanks guys.

This should be all I need now, so thanks again!

You may want to consider using an account manager to enable control of the multiple computers from one source. With a single login you can change the settings and projects for all the computers in a simple and easy to use interface.

I recommend checking out GridRepublic http://www.gridrepublic.org