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Report Says Schools Need 100Mbps Per 1,000 Users
alphadogg writes "American schools need mega-broadband networks — and they need them soon, a new report says. Specifically, U.S. educational institutions will need networks that deliver broadband performance of 100Mbps for every 1,000 students and staff members in time for the 2014-15 school year. That's the conclusion reached by the State Educational Technology Directors Association. Why the need for speed? For one thing, more and more schools are using online textbooks and collaboration tools, said Christine Fox, director of educational leadership and research at SETDA. Broadband access must be 'ubiquitous' and 'robust,' she said, adding that schools should think of broadband as a 'necessary utility,' not as an add-on. The report, called 'The Broadband Imperative,' further suggests that schools should upgrade their networks to support speeds of 1Gbps per 1,000 users in five years."
All the better to torrent with, my dear!
sudo make me a sandwich
I suppose that local caching of something as relatively static as a textbook is out of the question? My dead-tree edition books were often cached for 5-20 years. Really, how frequently does arithmetic change from year to year? Literature? Science and "Social Studies" I buy as being a little more dynamic, but still within a year?
100Mbps for textbooks
It's a new DRM system.
Palm trees and 8
From TFA:
Trust me. They won't even consider that possibility. It's only a problem when it affects them.
And that is the core problem.
Do they have any idea what the price is for that kind of Internet connection?
I'd be looking at huge caching servers first.
Um. If your text requires 100Mbps you're doing it wrong. Um. If your text requires 100Mbps you're doing it wrong.
It's *not* a "text file". It's more likely a locked down PDF or a similarly "heavy" format.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Speaking as a Network admin at a major university, the amount of bandwidth-per-user really depends on the levels of control the school is allowed (or willing) to apply to the user's Network usage.
For example, in our residences, students are told they have unfiltered access to the Internet, as in, they are allowed to use any software they wish. The only stated restrictions are overall bandwidth related on a per-day basis. Behind the scenes, a we use packet shaping hardware to limit the total amount of per-user bandwidth usable for such things as P2P or VoIP (to prevent super-nodes) but otherwise leave it alone. In this model, 100Mbps per 1000 students is inadequate, but only just barely. We currently have it at approximately 120Mbps per 1000 students.
Under tighter control circumstances, where P2P is disabled and/or other controls, caps, and so on are enacted, you can likely get away with less bandwidth. Other networks we distribute have such tighter controls, and allow us to dial the number down further to around 70Mbps per 1000 students (without any web censorship).
I submitted my homework, but the intertubes are full and until they are cleared you won't receive my homework.
My wife is a kindergarten teacher. In order for her students to access the content she is required to teach them they must first logon to the machines in the computer lab. (I'll avoid a diatribe on the woes of the poor password practices they are forced to teach these minions...) It can often take 1/3 of her classes computer lab time just to log on; granted much of this wasted time is due to the fact that kindergarteners can't remember their passwords but, an equal amount is also caused by the lag caused when the network is flooded with their logon requests (she has less than 20 students).
Once they've accomplished the herculean task of getting the little minions logged onto the lab computers the real fun begins. Most of the content is only available online from the publishers of the text books the school uses. Adding insult to injury the publishers sites are difficult to navigate often requiring the students to manually type in long cryptic URLs that would make torrent users eyes bleed. While much of the content is colorful, animated and has pleasing sound effects try and imagine what accessing this content is like on a network that can't handle a few dozen simultaneous logons.
While I'm a fan of using online resources, the schools (as directed by their boards of education, county governments etc.) seem to have truly put the digital cart before the horse in the mad dash to move toward education online. Also without competent, which of course often means properly paid, tech support (she was once told by a tech the printer wouldn't print because she was using a japanese USB cable) adding bandwidth is pointless.
What he said. "Textbooks" is really a misnomer these days. "Schoolbooks" should be used instead. Today's schoolbooks are typically full of color graphics. Have you looked at a math or physics book lately?
Do they have any idea what the price is for that kind of Internet connection?
When you get up to buying a gig, not as much /Mbps as the smaller allotments. But you are right, that would be a stretch for most institutions, mainly because their routers/firewalls/content-filtering/etc is not sized for the number of connections/pps that such a pipe would support. They'd be looking at a full re-buy and reprovisioning of their entire gateway path.
Someone had to do it.
Coming soon in Ask Slashdot: "I was assigned to set up a school network (about 100Mbps for 1000 users)..."
I would say caching servers is still doing it wrong. If thousands of students in a single building need access to "online textbooks and collaboration tools", why aren't those services hosted either on the premises or in some kind of colocation facility with a dedicated pipe?
Rather than place what cannot be more than 10gb of textbooks for the whole school on a local server for students of the school, lets run $10,000/mo fiber to every classroom. The insanity of government waste obviously knows no bounds. The audacity of government "IT managers" is nauseating. What? Is everyone stupid now? We can't count? I know that textbooks don't require a 100 or 1000mbit connection! I don't care if you have 10,000 people per 100mbit! Get a fucking clue! Store commonly downloaded things localaly. Shit, you morons, put the fucking textbook on the local machine (DUH!). Since when is this moronic behavior acceptable?
While Rome burns the ubermench in the government fiddle away with these "solutions". Now we'll be told for every dollar that we spend on this internet connection we can expect to see 1 trillion dollars in returns in as few as 5 years! Of course, as with every single estimate the government makes, it will be off by orders of magnitude and end up costing 1 trillion dollars in 2 years. At the end of the day I predict that the schools in question will have <10mbit connection at the price of 1000mbit connection, it will somehow drive up the price of internet service for everyone and increase educational spending greatly. All of which will have a negative impact on grades.
And really, fellow geeks, who thinks that computers on a kids desk during class are anything but a huge distraction from learning? I know if I had a computer at my desk during school, I'd be all about hacking the shit outa that machine and 0% on the lesson. More than anyone, the government is bound by the law of unintended consequences.
I'd be looking at huge caching servers first.
Christine Fox: "What's that?"
Someone mod parent up. Their requirements clearly indicate the need to repeatedly access same content. Which means that you could cut your bandwidth usage by 999 times when that content, accessed by 1,000 students, is cached locally when the first student accesses it. Can you imagine the cost savings of such a responsible solution instead of knee-jerk response resulting in head-on capacity accommodation?
Bow before me, for I am root.
and define the bottom 2%
in NYC a teacher that teaches in one of the most elite schools in the city was ranked one of the worst. reason her kids didn't improve from last year. they are already the best in the city but because they didn't improve she's a bad teacher
or what if all your kids never do homework and never study because their parents don't care?
As a visitor to the US (from Canada eh!) I think you are wasting your money.
Your kids can not spell, can not do basic math, can barely print their own names.
Your high school graduates are functionally illiterate: most can not spell well enough to use an online dictionary.
Your educational system is fundamentally broken, and nobody is addressing it.
If ignorance is bliss, you have the happiest students in the developed world.
Because, The Cloud... It's always good!
Today's content providers seem to jump through every possible hoop to defeat caching.
You would think that a video provider would use some indirect URL to first log the access attempt and then point to a static location where the actual video is provided, and that can be cached locally, but no...
In a new deployment, including a caching proxy probably is a waste.
E.g. our existing proxy now has a byte-% hit ratio of 11%, falling all the time.
the story you're referencing was a bit more nuanced than that. the students blew off a standardized test that didn't matter; that was part of it. also, she wasn't just ranked one of the worst. she was ranked the absolute worst teacher.
amazing.
>>> 'Can I watch my teacher's algebra video when I get home?'
Aren't they exaggerating a bit? I watch hulu and youtube video with only 0.3 Mbit/s. It's called "video compression". So yes the student at home does need broadband to watch his teacher's video, but he doesn't need a monster amount. Comcast's or Verizon's Economy Service (1 to 1.5 Mbit/s) will provide more than the minimum.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Someone has to be at the bottom in each school. But the "bottom 2%" can't be by individual school, IMHO. You'd be getting rid of some good teachers. I'm sure that in some districts, the 'bottom 2%' in any particular school would be in the 'top 25%' of teachers in another school in the same district.
So maybe cut/fire by district instead.
My local school district has several Verizon FiOS 115 Mb/sec connections for the district of 4,000 K-12 students. It isn't that expensive, but it is essentially residential-grade service.
They pay about $200/connection per month, probably $1K/month - much cheaper than the subsidized business class service the district had before, and much faster.
Our in school wire network is Fast Ethernet to the desktop, Gigabit backbone.
It was non-trivial to get this service at a public school, due to rate regulations.
Ken
Sorry.. but this statement is just B.S. Apple IIs and TRaSh-80s were the gateway for hundreds of future computer users and programmers. Students learned TONS on them, though maybe not was initially intended.
I agree with the point made often around here is that there is magical thinking when it comes to educational computer use. Today you need good guides. Computers in the classroom also mean something totally different when most homes have smart phones and PCs. However, you have to be careful... Apple IIs in schools enable a new era... it's not fair to say that they didn't. However, today kids already have already had the exposure to computers that the AppleII gave my generation so you need to take it to the next step and get under the hood.
A dedicated county/city wide server farm would probably be easier to manage and update than a per-school server rack.
Thank HTML5 for the death of caching as much as the advertising.
It is all apps now. And in schools they KNOW they are all incompetent boobs so they want nothing that requires skilled labor to maintain. So outsourcing is the word. Everything. Gradebooks, attendance, cafeteria manegement, email of course, Courseware, scheduling and calendaring, yearbooks. If it isn't being delivered from the cloud now it is because they are still fighting over which vendor they want to write a check to. (read as the bidding is still fierce over who will kick back more.. ok, I'm a cynic) That pattern means they need LOTS of bandwidth now and will need an ever growing amount going forward into an HD Video for everything future.
And the vendors love it. It will of course drive lots of sales to schools themselves but when the kids can't do their homework without a constant high bandwidth connection it drives the 'Internet is a 'Right'' meme that leads to even more billions and billions of sweet sweet government money that will only be available to the politically connected.
Democrat delenda est
This requires organization. Good luck...
Yeah, whoosh.
Breakfast served all day!
hmmm.
SETDA is funded, in part, by the likes of Verizon, Comcast, Intel, HP, CDW, Microsoft and TI.. http://www.setda.org/web/guest/sponsors
> why would the school not upload to you tube?
You obviously know nothing about the way schools work. There is an entire industry devoted to reinventing every wheel for educational use. Some of it makes some sense, schools have a lot of mandates for privacy and so on, but most of it is simply because. YouTube would be right out, a contract with an edu specific video hosting site would be required, and it would of course require a hefty annual contract with each school system. Each school would have to get a customized portal with the school logo, colors and such or it is a no sale. Access controls are a must. You can't put a picture that includes a student on a school's public facing website without moving a lot of paper for clearances.... meanwhile the local paper's website has the same photo from the game up that day and the kids themselves post everything onto their facebook pages in realtime. And it simply must be this way, the idea that it could be different could never occur. If nothing else, schools simply wouldn't be able to handle the concept of a vendor that doesn't charge.
Democrat delenda est
In Texas, teachers get admonished for having more than a certain number of F's in their classes. It doesn't matter if all of your low grades are from kids who simply refuse to do any work, teachers will end up having to raise their grade averages to avoid being fired.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Sorry.. but this statement is just B.S. Apple IIs and TRaSh-80s were the gateway for hundreds of future computer users and programmers. Students learned TONS on them, though maybe not was initially intended.
Sort of. I was a student, and I learned tons on an early computer. It wasn't the computer in my school that we were allowed to access for one hour a week to play games on though. It was my computer at home. The limited access to computers at school, the limited amount of things you were allowed to do with them, and the limited knowledge of anyone in the school about them meant they taught me absolutely nothing.
YMMV.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Every time the notion of judging the performance of teachers by their output, exactly like EVERYONE else with a job is judged, promoted and fired
Which industry do you work in? Because other than factory line workers and sales people, nobody I know is judged, promoted and fired like that. People I know are usually promoted/fired based on the opinion of their superiors on the quality of their work.
Or is it your position that there is no reliably measurable difference between a 'good' and a 'bad' teacher?
Pretty much. My position is that there is a difference between a good and bad teacher, but that it's not possible (or at least, simple) to reduce that difference to numbers in a way is both balanced across the different nature of classes, and impossible to game. It's a problem I find with most metrics other than the most simple of jobs.
In the same way, I believe that there are good books and bad books, but judging the quality of the book by using, say, average number of syllables in a word, is a really poor way of doing it. When we want to judge the quality of a book, we rely on human opinions (reviewers). In the case of people, we should rely on the opinions of supervisors, who have a greater grasp on context than does an algorithmic metric.
Which means it is useless. Mine is chosen almost entirely on the basis of being actually measurable and thus IS useful.
Just being measurable doesn't make it useful. Lines of Code is a perfectly measurable metric, but still sucks when it comes to determining the productivity of a software developer.
Come on over to the reality based community
The reality is, you need to base decisions on personal observation, not on some clunky algorithm that doesn't produce the correct result.
Really. How many other professions are there where the people in charge will openly assert that it is impossible to measure their output, immoral to even try.
How many other professions are there where your output is entirely determined by a third party, over whom you have no authority? The ability of teachers to effectively control their students has been diminishing year by year. Many of the students know it too, and know that there'll be nobody in a school willing to call them out on their actions, for fear of legal liability.
and oh, by the way we insist on being granted tenure even though the notion is utterly inapplicable to K-12 education
I'm in a different country. We have the same current trend towards metrics, but none of our K-12 teachers have tenure, although, as government employees, teachers are just as difficult to fire as any other bureaucrat. I agree with you that the solution to the problem is getting rid of the under-performing teachers; I disagree that a simple mathematical formula is able to determine that accurately.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face