Wide Area Network Services for Department of Education

Client Objectives

The Department of Education “Department” required a more reliable and robust network environment to provide connectivity to their schools. The existing wireless data links to the schools in the District were not only slow but also unreliable; which negatively impacted the District. The Department turned to SDI for a new solution that would improve bandwidth and capabilities.

Services Delivered

SDI Services include:

• Project Management
• Installation and maintenance of the following:
  • WAN – used Microwave and Wi-Fi technologies
  • Instructional Video Conferencing
  • School Cabling
  • Wireless Access Points – Motorola’s LinkPlanner Tool was used to design the Point-to-Point network supporting three islands (St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John).

• Network Electronics
• Servers
• Training on newly installed equipment
• Help Desk Ticket Tracking and Reporting
• 24x7x365 proactive   network   monitoring, including monthly utilization reporting
• Maintenance and support for all network equipment
• Performance governed by strict SLAs

Project Results

SDI provided the Department with next-generation wireless broadband technology that spans over 43 miles of ocean to link each of the Islands’ schools together and is able to withstand the adverse environment of the Islands, including rain fade conditions and mountainous terrain. The solution was engineered to meet the Department’s requirement of 99.9 percent uptime, using radio components that are capable of 300MB/sec. In addition, this broadband technology has built-in layers of redundancy designed to mitigate interference, which allows for maximum throughput when sending data and is further enhanced with digital error correction. Using upgradable software equipment to eliminate replacement costs, the system components will stay viable well beyond the course of the four-year contract with SDI.

SDI provided:

• Higher network capacity than predecessor
• Significantly increased WAN and LAN reliability
• Increased network speeds 300% in some areas

SDI continues to provide maintenance and support to the Department.