[1st-mile-nm] Santa Fe Schools' Wireless Network

[peter]

OK Richard

CLEAR Facts only ( Although we might want to link to the current Friam 
group about what is a FACT ( : ( : )

The system was NEVER largely deployed ( Small test set ups were tried 
just like field demos, set up take done in 10 minutes) into the district 
and the release was a " this could have been " that got out of hand with 
an aggressive vendor and has now cost JP his job.  The state auditor has 
launched a full investigation into MIS/IT and also its construction 
project cousins who have similar problems. The major issue is that 
wireless is totally unneeded in the district as it has a well developed 
but sadly underutilized fiber deployment courtesy of Qwest with State 
funding. Although that has its own design, operational and cost problems 
at least the right of way and most of the designs approval and multiple 
installation albeit in many schools not yet fully built out its there 
and more is being installed every month with many of its students doing 
the installation. To be fair when I talked to JP on many of the projects 
he saw the need to jump start connectivity with wireless to fill in 
holes in his fiber network. I,  as is most unusual am a contrairian " Go 
for the fiber end to end period "

I also sat on the school board CRC and also multiple building committees 
and have been emphatic all the way not to repeat the first mile hurdle 
and go for full WAN / LAN fiber with the maximum strands possible not 
only for the schools network but also to assist neighborhoods around the 
school. I still see our schools as ready built fortresses in the telcom 
snail networks area of occupation that can really kick start true 
broadband 100 megabytes and up in both ways.

As this investigation progresses I have offered our companies services 
to REALLY design and build out a network based around total fiber for 
educational excellence that the district and its neighbors can be proud 
of and I will regularly post progress on this list. Potential 
participants can chime in and I will connect you ( Excuse the terrible 
pun I could not resist )  .

Although it looks bad up here its really a unique opportunity for 
improvement

( : ( : pete

Peter Baston

*IDEAS*

/www.ideapete.com/ <http://www.ideapete.com/>


 



Richard Lowenberg wrote:
> The following article appeared online today.
> I understood that John Phaklides is no longer in his District IT position.
> If anyone on this list has any additional info. about this news, please
> post to the list.   Clear facts, only.
> Richard
> -------------
>
> The Santa Fe public school system is deploying wireless networks over the
> next two years to serve some 14,500 students, faculty and staff in 35
> buildings.
> The project, expected to cost $500,000 to $750,000, uses wireless
> equipment from Meru Networks to support streaming video educational
> applications.
>
> -------
>
> From: Broadband Wireless Exchange Magazine
> March 4th
> www.bbwexchange.com/pubs/2008/03/04/page1423-1594215.asp
>
> Sante Fe Builds Broadband Wireless Network to Provide High-Speed Internet
> Access to 14,500 Students and Faculty across 19 Campuses
>
> 3/4/08 - The public school system in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has begun
> deploying wireless local-area networks (WLANs) from Meru Networks that
> will provide wireless coverage for 35 buildings and some 14,500 students,
> faculty and staff over the next two years.
>
> Santa Fe Public Schools will invest $500,000-750,000 over the term of the
> project to extend wireless coverage district-wide to its three high
> schools, four middle schools, 19 elementary schools and various
> administration buildings. Meru WLANs are already in use at three schools.
>
> The Meru deployment is part of an ongoing infrastructure upgrade needed
> partly to ensure that the district can take advantage of an array of
> "streaming video"-based learning materials - from firms such as Education
> 2020, CompassLearning Odyssey and Discovery Education - that are
> increasingly being incorporated into school curricula. Streaming video,
> which sends live or prerecorded images to users' computers in a continuous
> stream, depends on high- quality, uninterrupted network connections.
>
> John Phaklides, director of technology for Santa Fe Public Schools, said
> that the highly mobile nature of school populations, along with the
> inherent limitations of wired networks, are driving the move to
> district-wide wireless.
>
> "The schools are typically older buildings that have only one or two drops
> [wired connections] per room," Phaklides said. "Not only do dozens of
> students need to be online in a computer lab at any given time, but
> there's a community of teachers with laptop computers who should be able
> to get onto the network no matter where they are in the district. In
> addition, schools have a habit of moving things around every year as their
> population is reconfigured. It's much easier and cheaper to move the lab
> down the hall if we don't have wires and cables to worry about. We expect
> our initial investment in wireless to be more than offset by what we save
> in making these frequent moves and changes."
>
> After Installing Meru, "All the problems went away"
>
> Before deciding on Meru, Phaklides's technology team had evaluated
> numerous wireless LAN products and deployed pilot networks from some of
> the industry's biggest names without success.
>
> "They were having tremendous interference issues in trying to use their
> web-based learning software with more than a few students at a time,"
> recalled Jack Vigil, CEO of Albuquerque-based Harmonix Technologies, a
> Meru reseller partner. "One or two computers in the room might be able to
> connect, but the rest were losing their connections and dropping off the
> network in the middle of course sessions. They told us if we could get one
> school to work properly, we could deploy Meru in others."
>
> After the first Meru network was installed in November 2006, Phaklides
> said, "all the problems went away just like that. At our largest school,
> Santa Fe High School, up to 45 people are online in the lab at the same
> time, supported by only two wireless access points. Meru has provided us
> with the consistent classroom experience we've been looking for."
>
> He attributes the success to Meru's unique "virtual cell" wireless
> technology, which automatically selects a single channel for campus- or
> enterprise-wide use, eliminating interference and the costly, tedious
> channel planning that plague legacy networks. In contrast, the "micro
> cell" approach used by most legacy WLANs assigns different channels to
> adjacent cells of the network, raising the potential for co-channel
> interference.
>
> "With our earlier wireless networks, balancing the user traffic load was a
> manual process," Phaklides said. "Now we put two access points in a room
> and the load balances itself, which makes the deployment process much
> easier. And the Meru controller units can be managed easily through the
> Extreme Networks switches we've recently installed."
>
> The initial WLAN deployment uses Meru products based on the IEEE
> 802.11a/b/g wireless standards, supporting client data rates of 54
> megabits per second. Phaklides said the school district soon plans to
> begin adding Meru units that incorporate the new IEEE 802.11n standard,
> which boosts performance as high as 300 Mbps. Meru's 802.11n products, the
> AP300 Access Point family and MC5000 Controller, are fully
> backward-compatible with the company's 802.11a/b/g products.
>
> Keywords: broadband wireless, high-speed Internet access, compasslearning
> odyssey, local area networks, santa fe new mexico, wireless local area
> networks, discovery education, school populations, school curricula, meru
> networks, frequent moves, administration buildings, wireless coverage,
> continuous stream
>
> By Robert Hoskins
>
> ------------------------------------------------
> Richard Lowenberg
> P.O.Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
> 505-989-9110,  505-603-5200 cell
>
> 1st-Mile Institute
> New Mexico Broadband Initiative
> www.1st-mile.com
> ------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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