Harmony Public Schools Upgrades to Fiber
Harmony Public Schools (HPS) in
Texas plans to upgrade all 46 of its campuses and the HPS Central Office to
dedicated fiber optic Internet service with managed security services to
provide each school with Internet access speeds of one gigabit per second
(Gbps).
Harmony Public Schools are K-12 college preparatory charter schools with a
focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. Rather
than being located within a single geographic district, HPS's schools are
located in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso and other
areas of Texas. "Since we have schools located throughout the state,
it's imperative that we have reliable service that is secure," said
Edward Caglar, chief information officer of Harmony Public Schools, in a
prepared statement.
To provide its schools and central office with high speed connectivity, HPS
selected Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) service from Time Warner Cable Business
Class (TWCBC). The service runs on a redundant and private end-to-end fiber
network and provides HPS with symmetrical connectivity. Many Internet
connections are asymmetrical, meaning they allow downloads at higher speeds
than uploads. Symmetrical connectivity means both downloads and uploads can run
at the same speed. Students and teachers at Harmony Public Schools will be able
to use the fast connection speeds to communicate and use online educational
resources.
As part of the network upgrade, HPS plans to implement TWCBC's Managed
Security, which includes a firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, remote access and
content filtering. According to the company, its Managed Security service
"helps customers proactively address security risk management rather than react
to threats and vulnerabilities as they arise." Because the service is managed
by TWCBC, HPS's IT staff will be able to focus more of its time on other
priorities.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].