Two San Francisco Bay Area school districts
are using Net Integrator to explore the leading edge
of integrated electronic learning environments.
"This is a pilot installation project,"
says their Net Integrator reseller.
"We were looking for an alternative
that would fit in a Windows Active Directory environment,
which would also require less maintenance and attention
once it was configured at the remote sites."
Net Integrators have been built into a
Municipal Area Network (MAN) design across the West
Bay school district, which covers South San Francisco,
and the East Bay district, covering the Castro Valley
area. In the West Bay district, there are 17 schools,
and in the East Bay district, there are 13.
"We're making this work in a pre-existing
environment," says the reseller.
Previously, the districts had elements
of their current set-up, but it didn't provide all of
the required services, and it wasn't integrated. The
West Bay school district has a central Cisco PIX firewall,
and the East Bay schools have a Microsoft Internet Security
and Acceleration server.
"There was no local firewall protection
at individual schools at all," he says.
The reseller's experts use the Net Integrator
as a "Demilitarized Zone" (DMZ) gateway guardian
at the main office of each school district. The Net
Integrator sits between the servers at the edge of their
network and the public network, and prevents outside
users from getting direct access to any server that
has private data.
"That's their first line of defense,"
says the reseller.
After the initial pilot, Net Integrators
are planned to be implemented at each high, middle and
elementary school in the district. The Net Integrators
will perform user authentication, DHCP (Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol), local firewall, teacher file
and print services, hosting for school intranet web
pages, and back up for files and system settings.
"They were trying to juggle the management
of several ranges of static IP addresses," says
the reseller. "Net Integrator will unburden them
of that time-consuming task."
Net Integrator's DHCP services allow users
to have their network and Internet connectivity services
made available with dynamic, non-routable, private IP
address, which are more plentiful, safer and easier
to manage than static IP addresses.
As well, the Net Integrators perform specific
functions suited to the needs of each level of school.
At elementary schools, there are important
files at risk on the teachers' PCs, which weren't being
properly backed-up before they installed the Net Integrators.
Now the data is safe and secure, and Net
Integrator provides shared folders with student access
to selected files. Teachers and students can share and
print files with each other and the entire class.
"They spend all day in the same room
together, and this gives them a new way to teach and
share information," says the reseller.
At middle and secondary schools, where
the students have more experience with computer systems
and the Internet, Net Integrator provides teachers and
students the ability to experiment with material posted
on the school's intranet, while Net Integrator's built-in
firewall protects everyone's privacy.
"This allows the students to publish
their work, get credit for it and get a sense of pride
about it," says the reseller.
The pilot project began in the fall 2002
semester and will last several months.
"There was skepticism about whether
or not Net Integrator could do the job," he says.
"It seems almost unbelievable. We're proving that
it can with this pilot project."
When the school districts contacted them
and explained what they needed, the reseller looked
into various solutions before deciding on Net Integrator.
"We suggested this as the most appropriate
technology given our experience. We were looking for
alternative technology to put in situations where they
would fit," says the reseller.
The IT environment at the schools included
a lack of technicians on staff, a great need for specific
services, and low budgets.
"Net Integrator offers a lot of value
for a reasonable price," he says.
He sites the ability to use specific services
and not others depending on the situation as factors
contributing the choice of Net Integrator for this solution.
"The excellent demo and our recommendations
about how this could be integrated into their existing
IT infrastructure were other important factors,"
he says.
"The Net Integrator can be a full-service
chameleon. In different environments it can perform
different services, without conflicting with the pre-existing
services."
Schools and school districts must plan
their budgets far in advance, and there's not a lot
of flexibility in them. Net Integrator's low cost and
high number of hardware and software services, as well
as its ease of maintenance and lack of licensing fees
make it the perfect solution for the school districts.
"When you've got a less than desirable
budget, you want value for the money you spend. That's
why Net Integrator raises eyebrows," says the reseller.
The "unattended nature" of Net
Integrator - the fact that it doesn't need constant
attention - also suits the school environment, where
there are no technicians, and district offices, where
the staff are often too overworked and underpaid to
spend time providing constant maintenance to distributed
servers needing regular security patches and service
pack updates. Net Integrator's automated backup and
two-minute disaster recovery services are also extremely
valuable in these environments.
The reseller cites a recent study that
they performed on the ratio of technicians to desktop
computers in the San Francisco Bay Area school districts,
compared to that of local corporations. In most corporations
studied, the ratio was one technician for every 50-100
desktops. In the school districts, the ratio is one
technician for every 350-800 desktops.
"So, having integrated solutions
that require minimum amounts of maintenance is a very
desirable and welcome attraction," he says.
