Organization: Vineland School District
Location: Vineland, NJ, U.S.A.
Employees/Staff: 10,000 students; 2,000 faculty and staff
Market Segment: Education
Applications: United Learning streaming educational video; Achieve3000's KidBiz online reading application; Polycom videoconferencing; NCS Learn, Pearson NovaNet, and PLATO Learning applications; JPEG digital cameras; controlled access building entry; online attendance and grading; Microsoft Office applications; e-mail; Internet access.
The Challenge
More than a decade after launching its first district-wide network, the Vineland School District, which as New Jersey's largest, spans more than 69 square miles, remains committed to providing its staff and students with all the advantages of modern technology. Today, it boasts a 3ComÒ Gigabit Ethernet metropolitan area network (MAN) serving 10,000 students and 2,000 employees. The network supports virtually every aspect of the school system's operations, from electronic grading and attendance district-wide to digital security cameras that monitor activity at the high school complex.
Although the MAN amply meets Vineland's current connectivity needs, the district is continually adopting new educational and administrative applications, and is opening four more schools in the next two-to-three years. In addition, the school system shares its bandwidth with the city of Vineland, supporting 600 municipal employees in departments ranging from the police department to the public library. To prepare its data infrastructure for added demands, the Vineland School District wanted a simple, cost-effective way to bolster its network from core to edge with advanced traffic management capabilities, including the delivery of Gigabit desktop connections to computer labs and key administrators. The district also sought to enhance the security of its data and systems.
Why 3Com
Working with 3Com® Gold Partner resellers ePlus Technology and TekConnect Corporation, Vineland opted for a solution including the following products:
- 3Com® Switch 7700
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- 3Com Security Switch 6200
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- 3Com SuperStack® 3 Switch 3800 Family
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- 3Com Switch 40x0 Family
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- 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4900 Family
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- 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4400
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- 3Com Guardian (SM) Service
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- 3Com Network Supervisor
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A longtime 3Com customer eagerly awaiting the company's latest products, the Vineland School District selected 3Com solutions for their advanced features, affordability, and extraordinary ease of use and management.
The Benefits
Vineland's new Gigabit Ethernet solution guarantees continued fast, reliable access to online resources and gives the district's IT staff unprecedented control over the network's use and performance. Built-in system security and management features provided respectively by 3Com Network Supervisor and the Security Switch 6200, let the IT team segment the network for more flexible and efficient use of bandwidth, block unauthorized users and viruses, and filter Internet access — all from a single central location.
At the network core, two Switch 7700s provide fast, redundant Gigabit connectivity between the district's 20 buildings and 20-plus servers in the district's data center. With Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching as well as Quality of Service (QoS) and bandwidth management capabilities, these core switches allow Vineland to create multiple virtual LANs (VLANs) to enhance network performance. For example, the school system now segregates traffic for its new United Learning streaming video application to ensure students watching server-based educational videos enjoy smooth, synchronized images and sound over the network, even at the busiest hours of the school day.
A Security Switch 6200 between the network core and the MAN monitors all network traffic to stop hackers, viruses, and spam from interfering with necessary school functions. With a built-in checkpoint firewall, traffic filtering solution, junk mail filter, and other security features, the Security Switch 6200 offers a range of security options, which Vineland can deploy as circumstances warrant. Today, it blocks all users from racy web sites, music downloads and online games, saving bandwidth for authorized uses. By the start of the academic year, Vineland will also deploy the solution's virus screen, spam filter, and intrusion detection features – extending security to virtually every area of vulnerability.
Working together, the Switch 7700s and Security Switch 6200 allow the IT staff to customize Vineland's network as never before possible. Advanced management features allow the district to reallocate bandwidth on the fly in order to meet shifting demand and provide connectivity to hundreds of municipal users without compromising the confidentiality of either student records or city data. The IT department can even spot a virus attack or security breach in progress and shut down affected sections of the network with a few keystrokes, without interrupting performance elsewhere — a capability that will save the district thousands of hours in IT support time.
With these powerful new switches driving its network backbone, Vineland has moved its previous Switch 4007 core switches to its high school complex and business office to support increased traffic at those sites. In turn the Switch 4900 and 4050 switches formerly powering those LANs will move out to smaller schools, thus making the entire Vineland network more robust from core to edge.
Switch 4400s in wiring closets district-wide deliver Fast Ethernet connectivity with QoS capabilities to the desktop in most classrooms and offices — but in its computer labs, which are newly equipped with Gigabit-capable PCs, Vineland is deploying managed SuperStack 3 Switch 3824s. The switches' flexibly deliver 24 four auto-sensing 10/100/1000 copper and four dual-purpose slots that can connect to fiber cabling for flexible Gigabit Ethernet backbone and server connections. With blazing speed all the way to the desktop, students and staff need not worry about bottlenecks or delays with even the most bandwidth-hungry applications, like KidBiz ¾ a news magazine that assigns every student in grades 2-8 written exercises based on an e-mailed summary of the day's news.
The new 3Com solution also makes schools safer. At the high school complex, 160 digital cameras located throughout campus take JPEG images every second, transmitting the images over the network to the security office six miles away. Additionally, an IP-based proximity access card system will soon give the school system tighter and more reliable control over who is allowed into district buildings.
3Com's comprehensive Guardian Service provides Vineland with 24/7 support and a guaranteed response time of four hours, further safeguarding network performance.
"Only 3Com delivers the plug-and-play simplicity and advanced features we need to keep pace with fast-changing educational technology," said Stephen Dantinne, supervisor of technologies for the Vineland School District. "The flexibility and affordability of 3Com's solutions lets us adapt our network to shifting demands virtually overnight — so we can give our students tomorrow's education today."
