Spokane schools use Gigabit Ethernet

The city of Spokane, Washington wanted to find ways for technology to make a difference in its children's education - not merely as an hour-a-week lab experience but as a fully integrated learning tool. Reflecting this desire, citizens of Spokane approved a bond initiative to upgrade the school system's voice and data infrastructure. This afforded them the opportunity to bring high-speed Internet connectivity to classrooms, enable data-sharing among different educational institutions, and enable voice and videoconferencing among all educational institutions.

The bond initiative resulted in an E-MAN (Educational Metropolitan Area Network) project, which was implemented as a new gigabit Ethernet IP-based network.

"We wanted a world-class infrastructure that connected every classroom with fibre-optic cable", said Dennis Schweikhardt, Manager of Technology Infrastructure for the Spokane School District 81.

"And, because the days of putting all the information kids need on a floppy disk or CD is over, we wanted universal connectivity to libraries, museums and all the resources available over the Internet.

However, costs were of paramount concern.

We had to look at operating costs that could be sustained after the bond.

It was clear we had to integrate our voice communications and our data because keeping them separate was cost-prohibitive.

Our costs for voice communication alone had gone up $100,000 a year for three years running due to tariff increases.

Besides integration, we wanted to expand our capacity.

An elementary school - and some of ours were built back around 1900 - typically had three phone lines in the front office.

With about 650 students on site, you can imagine what a zoo Monday mornings were, with parents calling in and getting busy signals.

The situation was even worse in the high schools, which had 1200 to 1400 students and little more phone capacity than you have in your own home".

The Spokane Board of Education originally considered Sonet for the infrastructure but eliminated this option because of its cost and complexity.

Finally, Gigabit Ethernet from Alcatel was selected because of its high performance, simple installation and maintenance, and affordability.

Spokane School District 81 (SD81) was the first to install a Gigabit Ethernet network connecting 53 sites at distances of up to 12.5 miles.

The fibre network supported both the voice and data needs of the district, but there was room for improvement.

Voice over IP gateways had been installed to move voice over the network.

But echo and delay problems and PBX interface issues slowed the implementation process.

A better solution was needed.

"RAD's IPmux Gateway offered the best solution".

said Schweikhardt.

"It provided a voice over the network system with excellent quality and none of the compromises we'd been making.

Right now we have a full T-1 for voice traffic into every one of our schools, and everything is backed by voice mail.

This all runs through the RAD gear.

RAD enables us to combine those circuits onto the same circuits that run our data.

As a result we have costs on a par to what we were paying before but with a substantial increase in capacity.

But what the new system allowed us to accomplish goes beyond cost and speed", Schweikhardt continued.

"The real payoff is the ability to do things we could not do before".

Schweikhardt enumerated the many benefits the students, parents and teachers of Spokane District 81 are now receiving, including: the ability of all the students in one class to take simultaneous Internet "field trips" to sites like NASA and various art museums; an increase in parental involvement (the top prerequisite for academic success) due to increased opportunity for parent-teacher communication; enhanced teacher-to-teacher communication; improved library performance due to connectivity; improved school security due to 911 emergency service capability that displays the classroom number on the receiving telephone; the addition of a special programme for hearing-impaired children facilitated by teleconferencing.

"The feedback has been awesome", said Schweikhardt, "from kids, teachers, parents and administrators.

When the system first went up with VoIP, it was frustrating, but no one wanted to give it up because they saw its potential.

After RAD came into the picture, everyone was thrilled.

One middle school teacher - who had always been put off by technological snafus in the past - told me this system has completely changed the way he teaches.

"I can't sing RAD's praises, enough", he continued.

"We have as much capacity as we could ever need in our schools, and we will continue to leverage that capacity in new and exciting ways".