Networking & Wireless

Harmony Public Schools Upgrades to Fiber

• By Leila Meyer
• 09/16/15

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.