Schools K-12

Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences is a college preparatory school for grades 6-12. Gregory Relaford, Technology Director, feels his use for NetEqualizer is a little idiosyncratic, because he uses the NetEqualizer not only at a gateway, but also (for brief periods) at the classroom, building and/or switch level.  The motivation is partly to carry out in-depth analysis of subsections of the network with ntop. He’s had such success he is seriously considering using this technology at pinch-points within the school, to protect the internal network from degradation due to file sharing and 'casting.  

“I think that the product is great.  It has advantages (and some disadvantages) vs traditional packet shapers, but the design fits many of the practical problems Network Admins face.  Other products have addressed bandwidth allocation and usage in a similar way but your product can be used in ways those products cannot.” 

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West Grand Public Schools is maybe an atypically small school District, their town of Kremmling, Colorado, only has one stop light.  But they may be exceptional in their commitment to bring technology into the classrooms.  They allocated a budget and they quickly came up to speed by providing Internet access throughout the District. Unfortunately, there was a stumbling block in their modernization:  their fixed Internet T1 trunk was completely overloaded. 

With a tight budget, they needed to avoid the recurring monthly cost of adding additional bandwidth.  Chris Rule is the Technology Director.  He was busy enough without needing to add daily network monitoring to his list of tasks.  They needed something that would handle the problem, and handle it completely.

They came upon the NetEqualizer.

Chris Rule, had this to say about his schools' experience with NetEqualizer: "The results were quite remarkable. The NetEqualizer prioritizes and distributes our bandwidth completely automatically. We basically just plugged it in and saw dramatic results within minutes.

"Most notable in our NetEqualizer experience is that the price was well within our range, and NetEqualizer requires no ongoing maintenance. The few initial questions we had were promptly answered by APconnections' support team. Other vendors we had approached force multiple thousand-dollar support contracts in front of you before they'll even talk to you. The NetEqualizer is so easy to use, that it can literally be up and running within fifteen minutes."

I administer the network at The Gunnery – a 9-12 boarding school. Despite having a packetshaper in play (which did help things when we first put it in), users were having a very poor web experience. Because it was so inexpensive (at least compared to other solutions), and I had heard some good things, I decided to try it. Also, unlike many other products, I didn't have license it per user or per device. Very simple.

NetEqualizer was incredibly easy to setup and worked as expected right out of the box – all I had to do was give it an IP address and tell it our bandwidth. Users noticed the difference immediately. Within days, the kids had figured out that if they 'hog' the bandwidth, things will go slow for them – works like a charm. Unlike many gateway products we have tried, it doesn't interfere with other products or authentication. It has some very interesting advanced features, and the support people were great about explaining what they could do, but I am loath to adjust anything as our user experience has improved so much by just using the default settings. Low cost, easy to use, very effective: one of my better purchases.

BJ Daniels
Director of Technology
The Gunnery