Egg Harbor Township School District

Raising the wireless networking bar with Ceragon technology, LTW expertise

Challenge:

Today’s schools need more speed and reliable access

Today’s school children do not remember life before the Internet and grew up on a steady diet of online learning and digital interaction. Their school environment reflects the Internet’s ubiquity with wireless technologies used in the classroom, a growing digital curriculum, and mandated online testing and assessments.

The need for networking speed expands every year, owing to the increased number of wireless devices drawing on a school’s network and expanded digital curricula:

• Desktop and laptop computers
• iPads and tablet devices
• Smartphones
• Video security systems
• Online learning courses

With all these bandwidth-hogging video, data, and mobile devices vying for space on the information highway, the network needs enough “lanes” to support them all and avoid gridlock.

Internet bandwidth costs from the major telecommunications carriers have decreased over the years, making it more affordable for schools to deliver increased access. But cheaper isn’t necessarily more reliable; and what happens when the network goes down? The network has to operate flawlessly. You can‘t tell teachers and students in the middle of a state-mandated online test to wait while a service technician comes out sometime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

The Egg Harbor Township school district won’t have to. The South Jersey township has been proactively building, expanding, and enhancing its wireless networking infrastructure to offer:

• Increased speeds
• Broader access
• Near-perfect reliability
• Triple redundancy
• Lower costs that lead to a faster return on investment (ROI)

Background:

A game-changing partnership for two decades

In the early 1990s, the Egg Harbor Township school district was looking for a more cost-effective way to provide wireless connectivity between its school buildings, deliver Wi-Fi access to the classrooms, and free itself from the grip of its expensive telecom service provider.

Using then state-of-the-art technology, North Jersey-based systems integrator LTW installed wireless access points at five of the Atlantic County township’s school buildings and created a multi-point wireless network. The LTW-designed solution gave the school district:

• Greater network access and reliability
• Ownership of its wireless network
• Improved customer service response time
• Lower cost of ownership

By eliminating the cost of its telecom’s services, the district quickly achieved its ROI and gained ongoing cost savings from the network for years to come.

Keeping up with the need for speed

Over the past decade, the Egg Harbor Township school district became more comfortable with the advances in wireless technology and the continued ROI of its reliable, high-availability, LTW-built network.

The district relied on LTW to expand and upgrade its wireless network every few years with the latest Ceragon wireless networking equipment. With increasingly faster data rates — from 10 megabits per second (Mbps) to 50, 100, and 300 Mbps to one gigabit per second (Gbps) — the Ceragon equipment enables the district to keep pace with accelerating network usage.

In a 2008 upgrade, LTW introduced a hub-and-spoke, wireless, point-to-multipoint network using Ceragon FibeAir 23GHz high capacity, microwave technology. The ultra-rugged Ceragon equipment, designed to withstand the harshest weather conditions, performed without service interruption through both Hurricanes (Irene and Sandy) that pummeled New Jersey in recent years.

The district’s high school hosted the network hub with direct links (spokes) out to each of the district’s other schools (Figure 1 below).

Solution:

Moving to gigabit speeds

In 2014, Kevin Urtubey, the Information Technology Services Director for the school district, secured approval and funding to overhaul the network in order to deliver gigabit speeds between the schools and prepare for the 2015 implementation of the multi-state Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) program, which requires twice-yearly online testing for students in grades K-12.

LTW implemented the Ceragon FibeAir IP-20C solution, the fastest, lowest power-consuming and most reliable microwave technology on the market, as the new point-to-multi-point connection. LTW then repurposed the Ceragon FibeAir 23GHz microwave technology to serve as redundant backbone links by establishing a redundant ring around the district (Figure 2 below).

Results:

A very, very robust and redundant network

Egg Harbor Township was extremely satisfied with the network overhaul as LTW was able to deliver:

• Triple the speed: The schools now have fiber-like speeds with FibeAir IP-20C delivering 1Gbs of wireless capacity.
• Triple redundancy: The hub-and-spoke topology and network-edge configuration now requires three separate failures to knock a single school offline.
• Industry-leading technology:  The Ceragon wireless FibeAir technologies are designed to last decades. The licensed frequencies incur no interference or disruptions from other radio frequencies.
• Repurposed equipment: LTW was able to preserve the school district’s legacy systems, placing its existing microwave technologies at the edge of the network.
• Significant cost savings: The Ceragon wireless solutions carry all the voice, data and video transport between the schools at costs considerably lower than the telecom carrier’s rates.
• Peace of mind: The school district is very confident that its infrastructure will be able to support PARCC testing, assessments, and a growing online curriculum well into the future.

Ceragon: The world leader in the wireless IP transmission market

With more than 65 years of proven field experience, Ceragon is the world’s foremost high-capacity wireless hauling specialist and the clear industry leader.  The company’s high-capacity microwave technology solutions transfer video, voice, and data traffic while maximizing bandwidth efficiency, delivering more capacity over longer distances under any deployment scenario.

Ceragon network solutions lower the cost of ownership, speed the time to deployment, and deliver the highest and most reliable radio capacity for any network. Customers depend on Ceragon’s products and its partnering approach to provide wireless solutions that meet today’s needs while guaranteeing a comfortable and cost-effective path to meet future requirements.

The LTW Advantage:

Lasting relationships built on trust

The LTW-Egg Harbor Township 20-year association is indicative of the way LTW does business. LTW develops lasting relationships by listening to the customer and understanding their needs and then designing, delivering, and maintaining the advanced networking solutions that meet those needs and ensure satisfaction.

LTW’s extensive wireless technology expertise combined with its vendor-agnostic approach ensures that every wireless network installation or expansion, every technology upgrade is the most cost-effective solution to satisfy the growing communication needs of school district’s.

IT Services Director Kevin Urtubey has been working with LTW since he began at the school district in 2002, partnering to provide the insight and direction for the district’s ever-evolving wireless network infrastructure needs. Whether an upgrade consists of a single piece of equipment or a major network overhaul, every LTW solution is designed with purpose and with technologies and equipment that can grow along with the school district’s inevitable need for faster speed and increased access.