"We rolled out 1200 Chromebooks to classrooms and CACHEBOX means that we haven't needed to increase our bandwidth."
Rodney Leer, Brenham Independent School District, USA "Our bandwidth problems have been practically eliminated. Monitoring & customization is a snap with the web interface."
Desert Academy, Santa Fe, USA "ApplianSys is the only vendor that takes the time to look at our appliances for us, and it really goes a long way."
Mike Caruso, Orland Park Consolidated High School District 230, USA "We are pleased with the usefulness and performance of the device."
Larry Steinke, Technology Director, St Francis High School, USA "Great service, great product, and easy to install updates."
Louis Webb, Nueces Canyon Consolidated ISD, USA

Cache Bounty for Isanti County

November 14, 2017
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ApplianSys is pleased to announce that Cambridge-Isanti Public Schools in Minnesota, has chosen a CACHEBOX solution to reduce peak time congestion and speed up web content in the classroom.

Cambridge-Isanti developed its E-learning programme to support independent learning and drive improved results from its 5000 students. But its success relied on ensuring equitable, fast web access at each of its 7 schools.

Having installed a fibre network and achieved its FCC ‘per student’ kbps target, the district looked set. But at peak times, such as the start of lessons, the network quickly became congested as thousands of students tried to access the same web content simultaneously. With all schools sharing the same 500Mbps internet gateway, there simply wasn’t enough capacity. In rural Minnesota however, bandwidth is simply too expensive to upgrade.

Rance Eberhardt, District Technician at Cambridge-Isanti, comments: “We couldn’t spend thousands of dollars more each month on bandwidth. We needed a more affordable solution that would counter network saturation at peak times. Caching looked to be ideal.”

Caching stores copies of content locally, so any number of repeat requests can be served without using bandwidth, and at LAN speeds. This can effectively multiply a school’s existing bandwidth, often by 5 or 6 times.

However, Rance found many caching solutions to also be expensive or unsuitable.

“Other network vendors offer caching as a small component of an expensive multi-purpose device, like a content filter, or use hardware designed to support much bigger links than schools need,” according to Head of US Schools CACHEBOX Sales, Sophie Clark. “CACHEBOX is a dedicated caching appliance priced to match a school’s technology budget – and it’s fully E-Rateable.”

Rance found CACHEBOX so affordable the district immediately purchased 5 appliances to serve multiple campuses. They deployed all 5 over the summer break in readiness for the new school year – with E-rate funding to come through later.

About

Cambridge-Isanti Public Schools (http://www.c-ischools.org/) (SD 911) serves over 5000 students across 7 schools across Isanti County in north-eastern Minnesota. The 5 campuses are located in the small towns of Cambridge and Isanti and the surrounding communities.