"Our bandwidth problems have been practically eliminated. Monitoring & customization is a snap with the web interface."
Desert Academy, Santa Fe, USA
"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
"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
"ApplianSys was very sensitive to our needs and have quickly addressed every technical issue that I have had"
John Calisi, IT Manager of Operations, Tennessee Board of Regents, USA
"Some days we are getting 60% hit rate! At the price it would cost us to upgrade to that much bandwidth, CACHEBOX will have paid for itself in one month."
Karl Childress Information Technology Manager, BC School District 47 (Powell River)

Cullman culls duplicate downloads

September 17, 2026
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ApplianSys is pleased to announce that Cullman City School District has deployed CACHEBOX, funded through E-Rate, to accelerate classroom content and take Chromebook updates off its network.

The district supports around 3,500 students across five campuses, on an estate that is almost entirely Chromebooks. Its campuses connect back to the core on a 10G link, soon to be upgraded to 40G, with 2Gbps from the core out to the internet.

That internet connection runs at around 80% utilisation, and the core upgrade was already planned, so capacity was not what the district was buying. Caching was bought to deliver classroom content faster and to take Chromebook update downloads off the network altogether.

Both are problems that more bandwidth handles poorly and caching handles well. Update traffic is almost entirely duplicated across a Chromebook estate, so a single local copy serves every device that follows. And content served from within the network arrives at LAN speed, avoiding the upstream delays that a larger connection does nothing to fix.

The district has deployed a CACHEBOX420, sourced through E-Rate with technology partner Synergetics DCS.

“The FCC is considering sunsetting E-Rate. Whatever it decides, a network built to carry the same download thousand times needs upgrading again and again, and each of those upgrades depends on funding that may not be there. Relying on bandwidth alone only looked safe while the money was certain,” says Chris Newman of ApplianSys, whose analysis of district caching data underpinned the company’s submissions to the FCC.