Orange County Completes 100 Gbps Network Connection
The Orange County Department of Education has established a 100 gigabit-per-second dark fiber network connection,
which will provide its 27 school districts with high speed Internet
connectivity to support digital learning initiatives.
Orange County ED partnered with CENIC, the California K-12 High Speed Network and the California Department of Education to establish the network, which will serve more than half a million students and more than 20,000 teachers.
Terry Walker, superintendent of schools for Irvine Unified School District,
one of the 27 school districts to benefit from this new connection,
described the network upgrade as "the equivalent of adding 20 lanes to
the 5 Freeway," one of the busiest freeways in southern California.
"The
ability to have a 100Gb connection will provide the Irvine Unified
School District with the limitless ability to dramatically transform
how students learn by leveraging technology and internet bandwidth in a
way that has never been possible for K-12 schools, until now," said
Walker in a prepared statement.
The network upgrade took advantage of the FCC's Second E-Rate Modernization Order,
"which equalizes the treatment of lit and dark fiber," according to the
news release. The infrastructure can support future bandwidth increases
with the addition of "relatively inexpensive optical components to the
existing equipment."
CENIC is in the process of upgrading several other California K-12 sites to 100 Gbps dark fiber connections, including Riverside and San Diego,
which should be complete within the next few months. "An additional ten
100Gb connections for K-12 sites are included in CENIC's consortial
E-Rate filing and planned for production after July 1, 2016, coinciding
with the current FCC E-Rate cycle," according to information from the
non-profit organization.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].