Historic School Gets State-of-the-Art Non-Stop Network
St Peter’s School chooses Allied Telesis for robust, flexible network performance.
Upgrading to the Network of Tomorrow, Today
St Peter's School in York is a co-educational independently-funded boarding and day school, in England’s North Yorkshire, with extensive grounds on the banks of the River Ouse. Founded by St Paulinus of York in AD 627, it is the third oldest school in the UK and the fourth oldest in the world. It has approximately 1100 pupils, aged 3-18 years.
When the time came for St Peter’s to upgrade its network infrastructure, Allied Telesis was an easy choice. Having worked with St Peter’s school for many years, Allied Telesis had a thorough understanding of the school’s network investment, including its benefits and limitations. Allied Telesis products had proved to be extremely robust, flexible—with third-party hardware support—as well as competitively-priced, and well-supported over long timelines.
Most importantly, Allied Telesis were able to support the school in enabling a modern, flexible network while at the same time reducing the ongoing costs associated with managing a complex network infrastructure.
The school is a very busy non-stop work environment, with a mix of new and heritage buildings, and legacy fiber installed. The network upgrade had to accommodate the older switches and limited bandwidth on the legacy fiber, whilst strategizing to maximize the return on investment for the longer term. The end goal was to create a 21st century network that can effortlessly accommodate the school's extensive Wi-Fi, Data and Voice traffic well into the future.
Automated Management and Proactive Monitoring
Once new fiber was installed, the new school network was able to support higher bandwidth connectivity between its core, distribution and edge switches. This enables support of modern learning tools and services, such as Office 365, as well as digital voice traffic (VoIP). It also allows students to bring their own devices (BYOD) to school to support learning objectives.
The new network core now consists of Allied Telesis x550 Series 10 Gigabit advanced Layer 3 switches. These powerful core switches use Virtual Chassis Stacking (VCStack™) to create a single virtual device out of multiple units. The x510 Series distribution layer switches also use VCStack, with link aggregation back to the x550 core providing 20Gbps connectivity. VCStack and link aggregation combine for a resilient design with no single point of failure, to maximize the availability of online resources and applications.
The school’s current Layer 2 switches were moved out to the network edge, where they provide end-point connectivity.
Allied Telesis Autonomous Management Framework™ (AMF) simplifies and automates day-to-day administration of the new network, with features like auto-backup, auto-upgrade, and auto-recovery enabling zero-touch management for true plug-and-play networking.
Vista Manager EX provides graphical monitoring and management of the new AMF network. Integrated wired and wireless optimization, proactive monitoring tools, and actionable reporting provide an easy to use, but powerful network solution for St Peters.
Resilient New Network Guarantees Uninterrupted Access
Together, AMF and Vista Manager EX have significantly reduced the complexity of the network operations at St Peter’s School, ultimately lowering the ongoing costs and providing low Total Cost of Ownership while providing an improved learning environment for students.
System integrator NETprotocol worked with Allied Telesis and St Peters to implement the network upgrade. The company’s extensive product knowledge of Allied Telesis products meant that St Peter’s was able to limit downtime to just a few short hours during the network upgrade.
Working with the school’s IT team closely during deployment ensured that NETprotocol transferred their product knowledge to the school, especially regarding new products and monitoring systems. NETprotocol was flexible in terms of installation times and dates, and performed pre-configuration of the new products to ensure minimal disruption and timely transfer of services.
Allied Telesis has worked with us for years, upgrading all areas of the three schools that share our network. Their commitment to us whilst we completed extensive ground work, upgraded fiber, laid new links and prepared our school to run a 21st century network, has been solid, smooth and pressure-free. Allied Telesis has provided understanding and support at each incremental step. The introduction to NETprotocol, and the subsequent configuration and installation of the new solution has been just as painless—especially considering the scope of the project.
St Peter's School in York
The resilient new school network now guarantees uninterrupted access to the many converged services and online education tools available to both staff and students at St Peters, supporting the school’s rich history, as they continue providing leading education both today and well into the future.
Partner Profile
NETprotocol has over 35 years of experience in designing and delivering network infrastructure and storage solutions into the SMB market. The company specializes in providing “always on” solutions, ensuring that businesses of all sizes have a resilient and high-performance network infrastructure.
