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| Gary Richardson
Technology Coordinator |
Bessemer City Schools - Network Technology Overview
Internet
The internet connection is located at the Board of Education (BOE). It is provided by the State DOE, via the Alabama Research and Education Network (AREN) hosted by the Alabama Supercomputer Authority (ASC.... http://www.asc.edu/). This program currently provides a 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) connection to state-funded educational organizations at no cost to Bessemer City Schools. Along with this service, the State DOE also provides content filtering (discussed below).
Web Content Filtering
In 2001, the Federal Communications Commission enacted legislation requiring all schools and libraries receiving funding from the "E-rate" program (discussed below) to provide "protective measures" to prevent students from accessing potentially "offensive" content over the Internet. The definitions of these measures and of the content they aim to prevent have been the subjects of continuous debate, and have not been defined by the FCC. In fact, the FCC has left the responsibility with each school district to certify that they have sufficient measures in place. To that end, the State DOE provides a web "content filter" along with its Internet connection, but it is up to each district to manage the allowed / blocked content.
Centralized District Resources
Bessemer City Schools has centralized many computing resources, such as E-mail, Child Nutrition Services, Financial Accounting, and Student Records on servers at the Board of Education. The users throughout the district can access these resources remotely via the district's Wide Area Network (WAN).
Wide-Area Network (WAN)
The terms WAN and MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) have become synomous within the past few years, as technology has made physical geography nearly irrelevant. Now the term WAN has come to identify a "private" network infrastructure that ties multiple locations together within a larger organization. Indeed, the "Internet" began as a collection of telecommunications links tying universities and research organizations together in a global WAN. Today, as in the case of Bessemer City Schools, the WAN connects each school to the BOE. The WAN is considered "private" in that theoretically there is no direct connection between each school and the Internet, except through the Board of Education. At the Board of Education, a Firewall exists between the district WAN and the Internet, restricting access into and out of the district.
A WAN typically has lower throughput capabilities than a Local Area Network (LAN). This is primarily a financial limitation; the cost of running a high-capacity link within a campus is much less than running a high-capacity link across town or across the country over a service provider's infrastructure. Since the late 1990's Bessemer City Schools has enjoyed a WAN with bandwidth capabilities far greater than that of most districts throughout the nation. Up until a couple of years ago, the industry standard WAN connection was a T1, which is a copper connection capable of 1.54 Mbps. In comparison, BCS has leased a private WAN from Trillion Digital Communications that provided 10 Mbps capabilities.
This year as the costs of fiber optic cable services have become available within the Bessemer area at affordable levels, BCS is replacing the wireless WAN with a fiber-based WAN from Brighthouse Communications. This new WAN will provide 45 Mbps connections from each school to the BOE, with the ability to upgrade to 100 Mbps in the future should it become necessary.
Local Area Network (LAN)
A Local Area Network is an infrastructure used to connect individual PCs, servers and even IP-based telephones to each other within a campus. In our case, each school or administrative facility in the Bessemer City Schools has an individual LAN. Today, this LAN consists of ethernet switches with 10 or 100 Mbps dedicated connections (or "drops") to the Network Interface Card in the individual device (such as a PC). These switches are inter-connected (to other switches on the campus) with a single 100 Mbps copper cable. In most instances, the core switches do not have enough cables run to support each PC in a classroom, and secondary "workgroup" switches or hubs have been used in the classroom to distribute the connections. Also, wireless access points have been used in the classrooms and libraries to connect a growing number of laptops.
In the 2006-2007 funding year, BCS was awarded money from the federal government (under the E-rate program... more about this below) to overhaul its LAN infrastructures. This award (nearly 1.2 million dollars), will provide the equipment necessary to run more cable drops to each classroom, and interconnect the switches with Gigabit fiber (1000 Mbps). This will give the LANs much higher capacity, and will allow new technologies such as video streaming and centralized instructional software the necessary bandwidth.
As part of the LAN, BCS has implemented a mixture of a "distributed" and a "centralized" computing environment. While many instructional and administrative software resides on each individual PC (such as specialized classroom software and Office Productivity programs like Microsoft Word), many multi-user programs and databases reside on servers at the individual schools and at the Board of Education. As LAN and WAN technologies become more robust and reliable, software programs are beginning to come full-circle back to a more centralized model. Having a central database on a server makes more sense from a management perspective than having hundreds of instances of a program on individual workstations.
Distance Learning
The Alabama Department of Education is taking advantage of advances in WAN and LAN infrastructure to provide a "Distance Learning" initiative. This program, called ACCESS (http://accessdl.state.al.us/) is intended to provide state school districts with the technology necessary to share instructional courses via Audio / Visual teleconferencing. BCS was
Bessemer City Schools - Network Technology Overview
Internet
The internet connection is located at the Board of Education (BOE). It is provided by the State DOE, via the Alabama Research and Education Network (AREN) hosted by the Alabama Supercomputer Authority (ASC.... http://www.asc.edu/). This program currently provides a 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) connection to state-funded educational organizations at no cost to Bessemer City Schools. Along with this service, the State DOE also provides content filtering (discussed below).
Web Content Filtering
In 2001, the Federal Communications Commission enacted legislation requiring all schools and libraries receiving funding from the "E-rate" program (discussed below) to provide "protective measures" to prevent students from accessing potentially "offensive" content over the Internet. The definitions of these measures and of the content they aim to prevent have been the subjects of continuous debate, and have not been defined by the FCC. In fact, the FCC has left the responsibility with each school district to certify that they have sufficient measures in place. To that end, the State DOE provides a web "content filter" along with its Internet connection, but it is up to each district to manage the allowed / blocked content.
Centralized District Resources
Bessemer City Schools has centralized many computing resources, such as E-mail, Child Nutrition Services, Financial Accounting, and Student Records on servers at the Board of Education. The users throughout the district can access these resources remotely via the district's Wide Area Network (WAN).
Wide-Area Network (WAN)
The terms WAN and MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) have become synonymous within the past few years, as technology has made physical geography nearly irrelevant. Now the term WAN has come to identify a "private" network infrastructure that ties multiple locations together within a larger organization. Indeed, the "Internet" began as a collection of telecommunications links tying universities and research organizations together in a global WAN. Today, as in the case of Bessemer City Schools, the WAN connects each school to the BOE. The WAN is considered "private" in that theoretically there is no direct connection between each school and the Internet, except through the Board of Education. At the Board of Education, a Firewall exists between the district WAN and the Internet, restricting access into and out of the district.
A WAN typically has lower throughput capabilities than a Local Area Network (LAN). This is primarily a financial limitation; the cost of running a high-capacity link within a campus is much less than running a high-capacity link across town or across the country over a service provider's infrastructure. Since the late 1990's Bessemer City Schools has enjoyed a WAN with bandwidth capabilities far greater than that of most districts throughout the nation. Up until a couple of years ago, the industry standard WAN connection was a T1, which is a copper connection capable of 1.54 Mbps. In comparison, BCS has leased a private WAN from Trillion Digital Communications that provided 10 Mbps capabilities.
This year as the costs of fiber optic cable services have become available within the Bessemer area at affordable levels, BCS is replacing the wireless WAN with a fiber-based WAN from Brighthouse Communications. This new WAN will provide 45 Mbps connections from each school to the BOE, with the ability to upgrade to 100 Mbps in the future should it become necessary.
Local Area Network (LAN)
A Local Area Network is an infrastructure used to connect individual PCs, servers and even IP-based telephones to each other within a campus. In our case, each school or administrative facility in the Bessemer City Schools has an individual LAN. Today, this LAN consists of ethernet switches with 10 or 100 Mbps dedicated connections (or "drops") to the Network Interface Card in the individual device (such as a PC). These switches are inter-connected (to other switches on the campus) with a single 100 Mbps copper cable. In most instances, the core switches do not have enough cables run to support each PC in a classroom, and secondary "workgroup" switches or hubs have been used in the classroom to distribute the connections. Also, wireless access points have been used in the classrooms and libraries to connect a growing number of laptops.
In the 2006-2007 funding year, BCS was awarded money from the federal government (under the E-rate program... more about this below) to overhaul its LAN infrastructures. This award (nearly 1.2 million dollars), will provide the equipment necessary to run more cable drops to each classroom, and interconnect the switches with Gigabit fiber (1000 Mbps). This will give the LANs much higher capacity, and will allow new technologies such as video streaming and centralized instructional software the necessary bandwidth.
As part of the LAN, BCS has implemented a mixture of a "distributed" and a "centralized" computing environment. While many instructional and administrative software resides on each individual PC (such as specialized classroom software and Office Productivity programs like Microsoft Word), many multi-user programs and databases reside on servers at the individual schools and at the Board of Education. As LAN and WAN technologies become more robust and reliable, software programs are beginning to come full-circle back to a more centralized model. Having a central database on a server makes more sense from a management perspective than having hundreds of instances of a program on individual workstations.
Distance Learning
The Alabama Department of Education is taking advantage of advances in WAN and LAN infrastructure to provide a "Distance Learning" initiative. This program, called ACCESS (http://accessdl.state.al.us/) is intended to provide state school districts with the technology necessary to share instructional courses via Audio / Visual teleconferencing. BCS was chosen as one of a handful of districts throughout the state as part of the Beta testing program. As part of this program, a classroom at Jess Lanier High School was connected and outfitted with cameras, television monitors and audio equipment, allowing local students to participate in real-time, two-way interaction in courses taught at other campuses around the state. This gives students at BCS access to a much wider array of courses than can be offered in-house. Welcome to the 21st Century!
E-rate Program
In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established the E-Rate Program to financially assist schools and libraries in obtaining telecommunications and Internet access. E-Rate is administered by the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) of the Universal Service Administration Company (USAC - a division of the FCC), and is funded by a fee imposed on telecommunications providers (who of course pass that cost along to individual subscribers... it appears on your phone bill). The percentage of funding provided to individual organizations is based on the level of income and the urban/rural status of the population served by the organization, so as to "level the playing field". BCS receives an 89% discount on eligible services, and has historically done an outstanding job in securing those funds and using it to drive technology within the district. It has used this program to fund the WAN, LAN upgrade, as well as the IP-based telephone service.
