Case Study:
St Swithun's School, England
Introduction
School networks are complex and serve a rapidly developing set
of educational requirements, some of which challenge the
technology and its security, implemented within limited budgets.
Schools take ultimate responsibility for the security of their pupils
and networks and need to provide an efficient, safe and effective
computing environment which serves the entire school - pupils,
teachers, administrators and all the other members of the school
community.
The customer
St. Swithun's is one of England's most popular and successful
independent schools with a reputation for a very high level of
academic achievement. Set in Winchester – ancient capital of
England, and founded in 1884 by the daughter of the then Dean
of Winchester, Miss Anna Bramston – it provides education from
age 3 to 18 for both day and boarding girls.
The school has moved twice in its history and today occupies its
present magnificent site of some 45 acres, which contains first
class sporting facilities, a Music School, and a Performing Arts
Centre. A new IT and Resources Centre is due to open in 2007.
St. Swithun's School wanted to upgrade their existing network to
be more flexible, expandable, and secure.
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Allied Telesis Case Study: St Swithun's School
The customer issues
St. Swithun's simple flat Layer 2 network was showing its
limitations.The school had for many years pioneered exciting
innovations in integrated networking, providing an infrastructure
serving the schools administrative, academic and domestic needs.
It was now facing new challenges with a rapidly growing network
and demand for features such as CCTV, video streaming and
wireless networking. Crucially, it wanted to provide a secure
platform for supporting pupil's own computers alongside (but
secure from) the core school network.The IT Department also
needed the facility to efficiently broadcast workstation images
across the site. All these functions needed to be possible without
adversely affecting network performance for the user.
The challenges
St Swithun's wanted to achieve the following goals from their
new network infrastructure:
"The biggest challenge that we faced in this project was opening up
our network to pupils with untrusted/unmanaged computers. Due to
the fact that our IT department did not have the resources available to
manage hundreds of additional student computers, we were forced to
find a solution that could be both secure and easy to manage."
commented Richard Hoare, Systems Engineer at St Swithun's.
Untrusted or unmanaged computers are controlled and
configured by their owners, and can potentially allow improper
access to sensitive or personal data, or even cause operational
disruptions to the network.
Above: St Swithun's School
Improved network performance
•
Increased security
•
Additional functionality
•
A flexible and expandable solution
•
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