Sharing the load in Kansas

ApplianSys is pleased to announce that its first LOADBOX customer, Central Plains Unified School District 112 in Kansas USA, has reported great success a year on. Increased internet availability and throughput have maximised caching ROI as well as online learning capabilities.

Despite lower-than-average internet bandwidth, Central Plains’ online learning experience does not suffer from slowdowns. Five CACHEBOX appliances, one at each campus, serve the majority of content locally to slash classroom demand and speed up access.

However, expansion at the district’s High School and the reallocation of resources meant the closure of one site, leaving the district with an unused CACHEBOX. Technical Support Administrator Lukas Sidzyik contacted ApplianSys in the hope of putting the surplus appliance to good use.

Thanks to LOADBOX, an affordable traffic load balancer designed for the ApplianSys product range, the solution was simple. Lukas redeployed the redundant CACHEBOX clustered with an existing appliance to expand caching capacity and added LOADBOX to efficiently distribute requests for content across both.

Now, a year since deployment, Lukas continues to be impressed with LOADBOX’s flexibility to accommodate the district’s changing day-to-day needs and how easily he can adjust his setup.

Not only is the district maximising ROI, but students are benefitting from higher uptimes, increased capacities, and expanded access to content.

“We understand the dynamic nature of school districts.  To make our customers’ lives easier, we always look to adapt our solutions to meet specific needs and maximise customer value,” says Customer Account Manager Marianne Cowie. “LOADBOX was developed recently for that reason. It ensures our customers can always make the most of their investments with us, even when things change.”

About
Central Plains USD 122 is a unified school district headquartered in Holyrood Kansas, some 100 miles northwest of Wichita. Founded in 2009 to provide education in its remote central Kansas communities, its 4 sites encompass all grades from Elementary to combined Junior/ Senior High school. To overcome the challenges faced by rural schools, the district relies on technology to deliver on its promise to give ‘Every student. Every chance. Every day’.