The King’s School, Chester

The King’s School is one of the leading co-educational Independent schools in Cheshire and the surrounding area.

Our ethos is to inspire your children to reach their full potential.

As you would expect our academic record is outstanding but what makes King’s special is the all-round education which equips pupils for their life beyond school.

Introduction

After a large investment in IT over many years with other suppliers, the staff and pupils did not receive a suitable, reliable ICT service throughout the school.

One idea was to use wireless, rather than invest more resources into the switching/server infrastructure, however a change of Network Manager has turned this around, with new suppliers/partnerships

By working closely with us, all elements of the infrastructure were considered and a development plan was created.

Core Switch & Servers

One of the issues related to the expensive 3Com chassis switch.  This was an impressive switch but it required an annual support contract and further modules to deliver increased capacity on the backbone.

A new HP core switch showed a Return on Investment within three years (on support alone) and this also provided the capability of supporting a migration to 10 GbE technology.

The new servers required a complete new strategy and configuration.  The project was carefully planned and implemented, so that the new system was tested carefully prior to a major roll-out.

More Switches!!

Even though The King’s School had purchased some switches, a migration to a common HP platform has increased the ease of management and the reliability across the site.

When planning for the upgrade of the wireless system, the number and distribution of the Access Points was considered carefully, with Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology utilised for flexibility.

Free Help & Advice

Topological Limited provided assistance with the planning of the network infrastructure, illustrating the relative costs of the various elements of the project, such as the switches and the replacement fibre optic cabling that was required for the upgrade to 10 GbE connectivity.

With budgets approved, we obtained project support from HP to reduce costs, allowing more elements to be completed within the original budgets.

The Future…

Following switch management training for their IT personnel, The King’s School have opted to retain our low-cost fast-response annual support package for extra peace of mind.

Now the staff and pupils are benefiting from a faster, more resilient system that now only requires minor modifications to support the development of this impressive school.