CACHEBOX banishes N Palos 1:1 ban

ApplianSys is pleased to announce that North Palos School District in Illinois has boosted classroom web speed by deploying CACHEBOX.

Under the district’s 1 device to 1 student (1:1) initiative, 3,400 students and teachers regularly accessed web-based learning content, but their experience was very hit and miss. With up to half of all users being online at the same time, bandwidth was often saturated, causing long wait times. Access was sometimes so slow that teachers were unable to use web content at all during lessons.

Dan Beko, Technology Systems Specialist at North Palos, assumed that upgrading bandwidth would speed up web access. However, like many schools, the district was tied in to a costly fixed contract for its five 250Mbps connections (totalling $6,725 per month) and unable to increase capacity without incurring excessive costs. In fact, North Palos was already exceeding the FCC’s affordability targets, paying well over $5 per Mbps.

Seemingly out of options, the tech team were about to ban 1:1 learning content altogether as a short-term workaround. But then they discovered CACHEBOX.

“By storing a copy of web content as it is accessed, all subsequent requests can be served without using the Internet connection – at lightning fast LAN speeds,” says Sophie Clark, CACHEBOX Consultant at ApplianSys.

Results have been instant for North Palos. In January 2018, over half of all requested content was served from cache – freeing up 52.9% bandwidth capacity for other content. The bandwidth savings on learning content in particular have been as high as 90%.

Sophie continues, “Caching has effectively doubled North Palos’ existing bandwidth capacity. The district now has the fast, reliable service it needed, at considerably lower cost than a bandwidth upgrade.”

About North Palos

North Palos is a suburban school district headquartered in Palos Hills, Illinois, in the Chicago metropolitan area. It caters for over 3,000 students at 4 elementary and 1 junior high schools across 5 different campuses. With enrolment growing while becoming increasingly diverse (33 different languages and dialects are spoken), district administrators and staff are continually seeking new and better ways to educate their students and prepare them for a changing world.