What schools need from network providers.

For most school systems, network development is a tug-of-war between what's technologically desirable and what's politically and economically feasible. In an ideal scenario, our teachers and students would be linked to an ATM/sonet-based network that accommodated full-motion, interactive video for distance learning, as well as high-speed access to a wealth of educational resources beyond the local community.

However, the reality for many school systems-particularly in rural areas such as Johnston County, N.C.--is that we simply don't have the budget to create a premium network. But that shouldn't prevent school systems from exploring other technologies and solutions that can offer benefits, and improve the quality and breadth of "local" education. The success of this approach depends to a large extent on the efforts of local network providers, and good corporate citizens and education-sector visionaries, to come forward and shape solutions.

The Johnston County system serves 16,000 students in some 25 schools. Ours is a moderate-income area with a mix of farms and light industry and towns that serve as bedroom communities to commuters who work in nearby cities. Most recently, the school system was served by 41 isolated LANs (local area networks).

Understandably, over time, our users became ready and anxious to reach beyond their LAN, and communicate LAN-to-LAN with their counterparts at other county school locations, and perhaps even get an opportunity to ride the Information Highway.

With the help of network providers Southern Bell and Sprint/Carolina Telephone, and equipment manufacturer Nortel--which has a number of facilities in nearby Research Triangle Park--the Johnston County School System developed a highly effective switched 56 kb/s data network that gives our users high-speed access to the Internet, efficient E-mail distribution, LAN interconnectivity and shared information databases, all on a public network platform that is friendly to expansion and upgrading.

Although, our solution may be considered "entry-level" technology for accessing the Information Highway, it does offer us significant benefits over basic POTS lines and 14.4 or 28.8 kb/s modems.

In the first phase of the project, we installed Beame and Whiteside's TCP/IP Stack software in 30 personal computers. Another 300 PCs will be on line by the end of the 1995-1996 school year. Data flows from these workstations to Ascend P-50 Routers installed at every school. When the router senses a network call, it automatically and transparently dials onto one of the 56 kb/s lines.

Half of Johnston County is served by Sprint/Carolina Telephone, and half is served by Southern Bell. Critical to our network's success was the ability of these operating companies to work in unison to provision a total of 30 56 kb/s data lines that would drive the network, and traffic our data between schools and administrative locations in Johnston County to a Southern Bell switch in Raleigh, 40 miles away. There, a GTE T1 span, leased by Nortel, connects us to a Nortel facility at RTP, where an Ascend Max 4000 Remote LAN Access Server links our users to NortelNet. From there, NortelNet provides us with access to file servers, E-mail, WWW services and the Internet.

Teachers, students and administrators can access the Internet and send E-mail to addresses both inside and outside of our school network. Password security restrictions allow only teachers and administrators to access sensitive data such as lesson plans, tests, and grade and attendance records. If a teacher wishes to make use of non-copyright-protected data available on the Internet, a request to NortelNet results in a download to the Nortel database for easy, instant access. Students can retrieve each other's data files by using an FTP application. As part of the project, our existing applications can be customized to enable various administrative and teaching units to easily move data to and from the NortelNet database. A leadership group comprised of a number of our staff (at least one from each school) is being trained on new applications by Nortel. These staff members will, in turn, train other network users. Eventually, every student, teacher and administrator will have the know-how to take full advantage of the network's capabilities.

That's what we've accomplished in Johnston County--a small feat by some standards, but quite an effective solution for us, nonetheless. We're already planning upgrades, and the most feasible way to finance them is to share the costs with the rest of our communities. A network such as ours could and should be expanded to serve our community college, police and fire departments, and town and county governments. In addition, the network could also grow and be made available to local businesses and residences.

That's all a possibility now, and will all spring from our core education network, whose success can be attributed to the efforts of our local network providers, and a nearby equipment manufacturer. Together, they provided us with guidance, and delivered a technology to match our school system's individual circumstance and need.