Resilient Internet for Springwood High School

Springwood High School is a 1,700 mixed pupil secondary school, located in the town of King’s Lynn, Norfolk. As part of West Norfolk Academies Trust, which has over ten schools in the area, Springwood have a future vision to centralise some aspects of their Trust operations to maximise their network resources, from VPN access to firewalling.

As such, a faster, more resilient Internet connection was central to their infrastructure plans as the existing internet connection lacked sufficient bandwidth to support the school.

The Solution

Having discussed their specific connectivity needs, VSL provided a 1GB/1GB Ethernet Circuit with automatic fibre broadband failover running in the background, which ensures the school can maintain connectivity during any unexpected outages.

Result

The new solution was delivered and installed within three months and has effectively doubled the bandwidth capability of the school’s connectivity, offering much higher levels of bandwidth with no contention on the line. The circuit also provides much-improved resilience when combined with the automatic failover.

One added benefit of the new solution is that the school can now move to a SIP telephony solution for better call quality and reduced monthly line charges.

Meanwhile, the school has managed to reduce the cost of the connection by over half despite the improvements. Having installed the line, including additional IP addresses and a pre-programmed router, we continue to monitor the circuit using our live PRTG monitoring platform.

Overall, Springwood has transformed the connectivity within the school and this new solution offers a range of benefits: