Red Lion Area School District Adds Gigabit Fiber WAN -- THE Journal

Networking and Wireless

Red Lion Area School District Adds Gigabit Fiber WAN

By Dian Schaffhauser
08/15/12

Red Lion Area School District in Pennsylvania has just finished deployment of a fiber-based broadband network using services from Conterra Broadband Services and a discount through the federal E-Rate program. The upgrade was inspired when the district, which has nine schools, implemented a bring-your-own-device initiative that grew in popularity.

With an assortment of DSL, internal, and leased optical fiber, and a few microwave radio links supplying access to the Internet, no school within the district had bandwidth greater than 50 megabits/second. With the new wide area network, many of the schools now have gigabit bandwidth.

Conterra, which operates in 25 states, was selected through a request for proposal process. The district had already worked with the company in supporting those existing microwave links. The new setup incorporates both microwave and fiber technology, to support distance learning, social media, web 2.0, and cloud-based services.

"With Conterra's network, the bandwidth on the WAN will no longer be the limiting factor for performance," said Jared Mader, district director of technology services.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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