We are about two weeks into having a fully deployed fiber optic network across the district. Depending on who you are and what you do you should experience improvements that are obvious to ones that are subtle. I know that when we move data around the network we have sometimes shaved tens of minutes off the process. I know streaming content is more fluid. I know we can download large data files, like updates, in a reasonable time frame.
That’s not to say that the network is perfect – there is still work to be done. Things inside the district that might slow you down are:
- Old machines
- Old Airports (yes. Airports.)
- Bad wiring
We also have a bottleneck getting out (and back) from the Internet. We can now use our entire allotment of 13 Mbps down from the Illinois Century Network, that is still a pretty narrow pipe for 2000+ machines looking for access. (FYI – before our new AT&T fiber network was installed we had a grand total of 4.5 Mbps network access. Now we have 13 meg to the Internet & 100 Mbps in between buildings.)
All of these things we are working on, and some will show results earlier than others. The first four buildings to be rehabbed in the Master Planning Process for instance will be outfitted with new network cabling, wifi access, hard-wired ports & some new switches. Also, there are some options for us to increase from our existing 13 meg access, and as always we are looking for ways to upgrade machines.
Have you noticed a change for the better? What change do you still want to see?
