NETSCOUT > Case Studies > Large Public School District Ensures Quality Student Learning Experience With NETSCOUT

Large Public School District Ensures Quality Student Learning Experience With NETSCOUT

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform
InfiniStreamNG software and hardware appliances
vSTREAM virtual appliances
nGenius Packet Flow Switches

Tech Stack

Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
Google Domain with Domain Controller
VPN

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Digital Expertise
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Networks & Connectivity - WiFi

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Human Resources

Use Cases

Cybersecurity
Remote Collaboration
Remote Control

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
System Integration

About The Customer

The customer in this case study is a public school district, the largest in its state, with over ten thousand employees and many tens of thousands of students. The district has years of experience providing quality education to their diverse student population. However, the challenges of remote learning are now upon them, not as an emerging trend - but as a requirement to facilitate learning during a COVID Pandemic. The district’s commitment to delivering an engaging, instructive experience to students as well as first-class support for their teaching staff continues as always. The district has implemented a transformative software defined network that leverages Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) with a sophisticated spine and leaf design which is well suited for the changes necessary to accommodate the challenges the pandemic and remote learning have created.

The Challenge

The school district, the largest in its state, was faced with the challenge of ensuring a high-quality learning experience for students and faculty during remote and hybrid learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The district had implemented a transformative software-defined network leveraging Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) with a sophisticated spine and leaf design. However, the sudden shift to remote learning presented new challenges. The district had to ensure that all students, from early elementary grades onwards, had the same educational experience as always, but now it had to be delivered digitally. The district had to provide remote learning to a wide variety of end-user devices, for both students and teachers. The district also had to ensure that services among teachers and administration, including Cisco Jabber, Cisco WebEx, and Microsoft Office 365, delivered over VPN, were highly responsive and available. The district's Student Information System (SIS), Infinite Campus, used for web-based K-12 student management services, had to perform optimally to provide real-time access to student, parent, and teacher portals for administration, instruction, communication, curriculum, and reporting.

The Solution

The school district utilized the nGeniusONE Service Assurance solution with strategically deployed InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliances across its private data center environments. NETSCOUT gear was deployed outside and inside the DMZ and examined both inbound and outbound traffic. In addition, specialized NETSCOUT probes were used to help monitor the performance of some wireless networks. The solution provided end-user experience assurance when using application services, whether remote hosted, or through their Cisco ACI data center, with smart data monitoring and smart analytics from nGeniusONE with ISNG appliances for applications. These applications included learning platforms, collaborative communication for staff such as email, Office 365, Cisco Jabber, WebEx, VoIP, and their SIS, Infinite Campus, etc. The solution also accelerated troubleshooting and problem resolution, leveraging the entire NETSCOUT solution, to reduce the MTTR for services by pinpointing the true source of degradations, outages, and errors throughout the transaction path, including the data center servers, the network itself and any associated VPNs. Network traffic aggregation and distribution were achieved with nGenius Packet Flow Switches for visibility into and delivery of packet data to monitoring tools including the ISNG appliances for service assurance and performance management throughout their data centers and colocations.

Operational Impact

Reduced impact on students and teachers from degradations and threat of potential disruptions.
Improved teachers and administrators’ experiences with quick isolation of bottlenecks.
Maximized IT efficiencies by using a single-solution approach to truly pinpoint the source of disruptions and slowdowns.
Reduced MTTR to return services to efficient operation by the appropriate IT team and/or third-party vendor.
Stayed ahead of issues using trended data for planning ahead of capacity bottlenecks and/ or alerting IT when performance volumes, responsiveness, or errors may be changing and require attention.

Quantitative Benefit