Challenge
10 years ago, the Sunnyside School District was having difficulty connecting Outlook Elementary, a satellite school 10 miles away from the nearest building in the district. Their network connection was a fracture T1, with a total bandwidth of about 3 megabits for the entire school. This made supporting Outlook extremely challenging because they couldn’t offer normal remote support.
Solution
Sunnyside received E-Rate funding and chose Fatbeam to become their Internet service provider and build out their dark fiber backbone. They were able to reroute their fiber network to Outlook Elementary and add redundancy into their network as well. Fiber networks, and most telecommunications infrastructure, require redundancy in order to maintain a consistent connection. Before, when it was just district-owned fiber, if anything went down in the network, they were down for the count. Now, if the network is having technical issues, they get a call immediately about whatever the issue is, and it is addressed immediately.
“We wanted to build something that was going to be good not for 5 years but for 10 years down the road. About 10 years ago we asked ourselves, “what happens when we get to 25 gig uplinks, 40 gig uplinks, 100 gig uplinks, are we going to be able to handle that?” and with Fatbeam’s fiber, the answer is yes. Everything has been well thought out and well planned, that’s one of the great things about Fatbeam.” David Peterson
Results
“There are two advantages to using Fatbeam: One, that it’s easy, you guys do regular maintenance, you guys think of things that I don’t have to think about, and two, the partnership with Ednetics. Having that close connection allows for us to avoid getting into finger-pointing games. Fatbeam is a group of people who are interested in solving problems.” Says David Peterson.
“I like the fact that Fatbeam just works, and if I need something I get someone on the phone who actually knows what they are talking about, understands the infrastructure that has been put around here, Fatbeam did a great job of original documentation. I have guys like Zac and Gavin who take the time to call me and give me a heads up on any issues and keep me up to speed on things that might happen. I really like the idea that I can get an engineer on the phone and get answers quickly.”
About Sunnyside School District
Established in 1895, the Sunnyside School District offers K-12 education to students residing in Sunnyside and Outlook. They emphasize the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development of each child and strive to instill high standards of academic integrity and leadership in their students. Through their programs, students are given the technology, resources, and knowledge to be effective members of their school community and a global society.
Their campuses boast modern facilities and grounds, state-of-the-art, student-friendly technology, and a great faculty of ambitious teachers and support staff ready to give their students the best opportunities to succeed.
To learn more about the Sunnyside School District, please click this link.
