The Requirement
Wood End Academy is a rapidly growing Junior School in Greenford. One year ago, the school, with funding from Ealing Borough, opened a new building. However, in order to cope with the network demands of a growing school, it needed to replace the legacy equipment that was installed to future proof the school for its growth.
The school’s old wireless network struggled to allow more than ten children online at one time. Levett Consultancy recommended that the school upgrade its existing equipment to ensure the teachers and pupils have a consistent learning environment within both the old and new buildings.
Levett Consultancy a D-Link Gold Partner recommended a Wireless and Microsoft solution that would be more robust and resilient, whilst being better value for money than upgrading what was already in place. This would enable the school to prepare for the future when it will be growing to four years of four-form entry.
The Solution
Levett Consultancy wireless and Microsoft solution delivered the capacity, scalability and reliability that the school required at a price that was competitive. Levett Consultancy conducted a site survey alongside D-Link and recommended a range of managed switches and access points to deliver a fully managed backbone using D-Link xStack technology for speed and resilience that would enable the implementation of a managed wireless network to support the connection of 150 devices simultaneously, 30 per classroom. There is one account for students and staff and a captive portal for guests, so that whenever anyone from the local authority visits they are able to work as productively as if they were at the office.
The switches are connected by a fibre network for speed and bandwidth and the access points used deliver best-in-class high data transmission speeds and a load balancing feature. Thanks to the capacity and reliability of the network, the school has also been able to run an IP Telephony system over it. The network also has Quality of Service (QoS) in order to prioritise the voice traffic over data. Quality of service is the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow.
As Wood End was a local school and would be leading the way with this equipment in the area, Levett Consultancy requested that D-Link offer them its ‘Academy’ status. On becoming a D-Link Academy Wood End is able to demonstrate that they are technology pioneers and can provide an example to other schools, becoming a showcase for the latest technology.
The Outcome
The installation was incredibly smooth running. The school now has all of its iBoard Touch devices and notebooks connected to the wireless network to enable productive, engaging learning for the children. Whilst teachers can make the most of their time by bringing their own mobile devices into the school and using them both in lessons and in the staff room for planning, reports and research.Sarah-Jane Francis (Network Manager)