Having a powerful and reliable network in your school district means having the right elements to expand research, improve safety, secure internet access, gather analytics of usage data for the network, and most importantly, focus on students and their outcomes.
Forsyth County Schools wanted to ensure that they had that kind of network technology for their district.
“Our primary commitment is delivering the best possible educational experiences to our students, and we’re thrilled to have Extreme as a partner. Since we started working with Extreme Networks, we have seen a significant improvement in network performance and we’ve been able to scale without sacrificing connectivity quality as our student and staff population grows.” – Curt Godwin, Network Operations Coordinator, Forsyth County School District
As one of the largest school districts in Georgia, with over 50,000 students and 6,500 staff members, Forsyth County Schools requires strong and reliable technology to enable successful learning outcomes. The network not only connects students and staff members but also building safety devices across the campus. The district contains over 1,500 surveillance cameras around the buildings, and since the students are encouraged to bring their own devices, there are roughly 100,000 unique devices that connect to the network.
Forsyth had to decide among Extreme, Xirrus, Aruba/Alcatel, Meraki, and Riverbed. Security Operations Engineer Sean Fowler notes that when choosing their vendor, they asked “How easy is it to manage? What sort of information is on the dashboard?” They decided that Extreme would ultimately be the best choice for their district to realize their goals.
The district worked with Extreme Networks to deploy over 4,000 ExtremeMobility access points, ExtremeSwitching, and ExtremeAnalytics. Forsyth deployed Extreme’s Smart OmniEdge and Automated Campus solutions to make sure that even with the growing bandwidth demand (1,800 new students every year) the service quality remains high.
Here’s a glimpse into Forsyth’s environment, network solution, and outcomes:
Moving into the future, the district plans to:
Without their reliable and powerful network infrastructure, these initiatives would not be possible. Additionally, Forsyth would not have been able to triple their network bandwidth, eliminate system operational issues, and enable 100% online state testing without their refreshed network solution.
Overall, Extreme’s solutions allowed Forsyth to simplify network management via Extreme Management Center and strengthen security on all devices that connect to the network with their NAC solution, ExtremeControl.
Forsyth County Schools is now able to provide a better learning environment for the students, an improved working environment for the staff, and safer, more secure buildings for all.
For more information on Forsyth’s network success, view the complete case study!
This blog was originally authored by Morgan Blaney, Content Marketing Co-op.
