"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 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 "DNSBOX is a solid solution with a reasonable cost point"
Steve Seidl, Mgr. IT Services and Operations, Endries Intl Inc, A Ferguson Subsidiary, USA "Out of our 350Mbps connection we only use 100Mbps because of CACHEBOX, and this is to support 2000 devices!"
Fadil Hamidovic, Bayless School District, USA

DNSBOX fills Apple core services gap

June 09, 2021
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ApplianSys is pleased to announce that Baxter Springs Unified School District in Kansas USA has chosen DNSBOX to replace its unsupported Apple DNS/DHCP solution to deliver more secure and reliable network access for school devices.

Baxter Springs needed reliable, secure connectivity for more than 2,200 devices. Both school-managed and BYOD devices are used to access online learning content, so any downtime would negatively impact the classroom.

However, the district’s existing Apple DNS and DHCP servers are no longer supported. With no more updates for DNS and DHCP from Apple, Baxter Springs Technology Director Ross Davies knew internet access would become insecure, slow, and at risk of failure.

Apple ceased support for DNS and DHCP in 2018, leaving many Apple-based school districts at risk, and in need of a low-cost, easy to implement, replacement solution. Like most schools, Baxter Springs feared commercial-grade solutions would be overcomplicated and wouldn’t match education budgets.

Ross defined the district’s needs as straightforward:

For DNS: add local server addresses for secure LAN-side resolution of private IP addresses.

For DHCP: assign static IP addresses based on MAC addresses, and dynamically assign BYOD addresses on the district’s flat network, weekly.

Thankfully, Ross discovered DNSBOX. He instantly appreciated the easy-to-use interface, simplified administration, and advanced levels of security, and was excited to find he could deploy both DNS and DHCP on a single server.

“DNSBOX’s modular approach allows both recursive DNS and DHCP services to run in sandboxed environments on the same physical server, making it highly cost-effective,” says DNSBOX Product Manager Magdalena Jovanovic. “Schools can replace old, unsupported or do-it-yourself DDI solutions more affordably, gaining the ease of use and ultra-secure reliability they need for today’s learning environments.”

About

Located in a small rural town in Kansas USA, Baxter Springs Unified School District 508 caters for over 1,000 students from the local area. A strong belief that technology can broaden the scope and opportunities for every student tech is reflected in its 1:1 learning initiative and its support of independent BYOD access for all users.