Page 62 - Technology Plan for School Years 2017 to 2021

Executive Overview

The infrastructure at the District provides the underpinnings necessary to drive technology
for the next few years. The infrastructure, both wired and wireless, must be robust enough to
support increased utilization, yet flexible for a paradigm shift toward cloud computing
solutions. With the increased dependency on technology, the network infrastructure must
facilitate the requirements necessary for success. The architecture must be adaptable,
scalable, secure, and manageable. The network, including all voice, data, and digital video
communications, will require bandwidth capacity, flexibility, mobility, and security necessary
to meet the needs of the schools in real-time. Communications must be possible beyond a
school to home environment, to learning centers, the State, Country, and World.

Network and Performance Efficiencies

The District's network is currently a geographically dispersed redundant network of two (2)
Data Centers: FHESC and SITV. This geographically redundant architecture is provided by
our Internet service providers: AT&T and Florida LambdaRail (FLR). Our infrastructure has
two (2) points-of-presence; one with AT&T located in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami, and a single
point-of-presence on Florida LambdaRail provided by Palm Beach County. These
redundancies doubled our internal and external network capacity, where we are now
positioned for future scalability to respond to increasing demands. To provide safe and
reliable network services for students, teachers, and employees; a proactive rather than
reactive approach is required.

Technical challenges arrive at unexpected times, and unforeseen problems are inevitable. A
System Response Center (SRC) can provide network stability while implementing
appropriate tools and monitoring for optimal management of infrastructure. The District’s
SRC is the main center for network monitoring, performance, and dashboards. This Center is
designed to monitor the network at each of the 180+ school locations, as well as the many
District offices. The SRC is under great pressure to meet both business and educational
service demands. It is a crucial cornerstone for the District; its main goal is to respond to the
business and educational needs of teachers, students and employees, all while ensuring a
safe and reliable network.

Over the next five years, the District will focus on improvements to its infrastructure that
address critical downtime and the end user experience. Large investments will focus on
increased bandwidth, wireless capacity, device stability, and site to site connectivity
redundancy. Continued investments will focus on network monitoring, system and network
intrusion detection, log aggregation and event correlation. Hardware such as switches,
routers, and fiber optic wiring will be upgraded to the most current technology according to
our five year plan. All school site circuits will be upgraded in FY17 to handle 4 times their

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