Peplink has announced a successful project with Colégio Next, a school in Sao Paolo, Brazil that has built an affordable network infrastructure to provide simultaneous access to media-rich educational content for its 500 Apple iPad users.
Colégio Next is an Elementary, Middle and High School attended by 600 students from ages of 2 to 17. Recognised as one of the best schools in Brazil, it has also earned Apple’s Distinguished School status through its outstanding innovation, leadership and education excellence which includes over 500 iPads its students use as a learning tool.
Situated in the suburbs, high quality Internet connections able to support 500 iPads simultaneously downloading media-rich content was a stretch for the school’s budget and resulted in a congested and poorly performing network. Educational application and course content would frequently refuse to download and in some instances having more than a couple students connected to the same Wi-Fi access point was enough to bring the system to a halt.
“So imagine 40 students and a teacher trying to download the same content at the same time, this is a problem for any internet connection,” explains Alberto Pamos, IT Director of Colégio Next, “This challenge was overcome with arrival of the equipment from Peplink.”
Pamos deployed Peplink’s MediaFast series router which offers load balancing between affordable Internet connections from multiple service providers and also caches frequently accessed educational content such as iOS apps, iTunes U, iBooks and Apple TV media. The cache also manages iOS updates which are downloaded once and distributed to all local iOS devices to reduce network congestion as these files can be as large as 2GB.
MediaFast includes advanced features such as load balancing and per user group bandwidth control which Colégio Next has configured to give teachers first priority access to the bandwidth, then the students and then outdoor areas and guest access. MediaFast also includes an AP Controller that makes MAC address filtering easy with students assigned to designated APs by their devices' MAC Address in order to prevent saturating any single AP.
“The Peplink solution runs perfectly,” says Pamos, “The learning and teaching experience was so well received that our school has now become a national reference.” With the solution delivering results, Colégio Next has welcomed teachers and school presidents from across Brazil to tour its facilities to learn about its unique network infrastructure and how iPad and Peplink MediaFast is improving the learning experience.
In 2014, Colégio Next was recognised by Apple as a Distinguished School and the full eBook outlining its approach to teaching, learning and innovation is available as a free download via https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/next-school/id996716018?mt=11