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INTERNET
UPGRADES
At the end of School Year 2020, District internet traffic District resulting in greater internet traffic and a content
was averaging about 12GB on any given school day. filtering change being implemented by the IT Security
Our capacity is 24GB. For reference and perspective, Team.
think of a cell phone plan allowing 24GB a month and
how much you would use. The School District could When COVID hit, internet traffic instantly dropped to
potentially use 24GB of data every second of every day! essentially nothing with all staff and students out of the
The IT Infrastructure Department has built the District buildings. However, we realized that the forthcoming 1:1
infrastructure over the last six years to handle internet computer-to-student standard, Chromebook distribution
loads based on usage and security threats. We’ve and Google Meet video would skyrocket future demand.
made multiple paths to the internet to increase capacity Therefore, we executed another clause in our District
and ensure redundancy. Our goal is to try to run at only contracts to increase our internet capacity in Summer
half capacity to accommodate a sudden massive influx 2020 to 40GB knowing there would be a dramatic
(e.g. a DDOS or other emergency event) and mitigate increase of traffic when students returned to school.
any unpredictable outages, such as a fiber cut, while
still being able to provide the internet undegraded. The As students and teachers began a migration back
architecture and planning have proven quite reliable and to school, we closely monitored as internet utilization
we continue to improve every year. climbed into the 30-40GB daily. A final upgrade
of internet circuits to 60GB was completed in late
Every year the District internet bandwidth needs are November to cover the new circumstances. It’s truly
reevaluated. This past Summer, we determined that we amazing to realize that we have almost tripled our
should execute a provision in District contracts to reach capacity within a year! Out of necessity, the infrastructure
a total capacity of 32GB. This decision was hastened plotted the way and met the challenge.
by the steady increase of Chromebooks pouring into the
