Westborough High School
Not very welcome in the jungle
Previous suppliers had left Westborough High School with a jungle of cables that was practically impossible to manage.
The cabinets and the layout provided insufficient capacity to cater for their growing computer system and every time someone squeezed behind the cabinets, cables were damaged or disconnected due to the piles of cables on the floor and the lack of space.
We designed a more effective layout and migrated the cabling to separate cabinets, delivering greater capacity for the servers.
The new system is still not ideal, as access to some cabinets is still restricted, but there is a huge overall improvement with none of the original issues.
Switched networking vendors
As new servers were added and wireless planned, a new HP chassis core switch solution was designed.
Various options were detailed, illustrating capacity, performance and costs, with a 12-slot zl chassis selected by the client to provide the best long term solution.
Gradually the older Dell switches have been replaced with higher specification HP Gigabit managed switches that offer greater control and are supported by a lifetime warranty.
Wireless expansion
Wireless was also “switched” as the original Netgear Access Points were replaced by high specification HP dual radio APs that support 2.4 & 5 GHz clients with an impressive maximum throughput of 900 Mbps, which is nearly Gigabit performance.
As new iPads have been added, the position of some APs had to be changed, as initially the solution utilised the minimum quantity (to reduce costs) of APs to support the 2.4 GHz devices, as there are different signal/transmission characteristics for 5 GHz signals.
Planning for the future
We have regular review meetings with Westborough High School to offer advice and solutions to optimise the use of ICT across the school.
This currently includes the implementation of two new ICT suites and increased capacity/resilience within the core switch.
