The ‘digital campus’ or ‘digital classroom’ is the new norm for students in 2022. Traditional network solutions are not the answer for these new ways of working so, as education establishments move to become digital-first, SD-WAN can help you facilitate the transition.
SD-WAN technology continues to increase bandwidth and connectivity at University and college campuses. The number of connected devices on higher education campuses continues to increase - libraries, classrooms, lecture halls, and student unions are not the only Wi-Fi hotspots on campus any longer. Students, faculty, and staff with multiple device types connect wirelessly throughout the campus.
The benefits of deploying SD-WAN in a higher education are numerous, but at a high level you have the ability to:
Optimise network traffic to manage the complex connectivity needs of students, faculty, and staff without costly upgrades. SD-WAN keeps the network running optimally, reducing the risk of outages and data loss. Educational institutions can use SD-WAN to make the most of their bandwidth. SD-WAN provides the resiliency and redundancy needed to support educational institutions. It delivers low-latency connectivity. Traffic can be navigated around network issues to ensure availability. Application load sharing, link balancing, and link failover all work together to keep online classrooms up and running.
Increase bandwidth for critical applications, such as live-streamed lectures, research material, or other video conferencing resources. With SD-WAN, students, faculty and staff can use bandwidth-heavy educational applications. Automated capabilities in SD-WAN balance loads so students and faculty have fewer limits on the educational software they use or on data-heavy video conferencing platforms. SD-WAN can streamline network traffic in order to dedicate bandwidth per resource so that a live-streamed lecture will not compete against a student researching in from the library for network capacity. Better user experience with reduced latency for all.
Alleviate on-campus IT departments with maintaining network security and upgrades with centralised management protocols. Educational institutions are not focused on managing the network. Management and maintenance tasks take time away from developing new ways to use technology in administration and instruction. Schools need a solution that is easy to implement and maintain. With an experienced partner, the transition to SD-WAN can be seamless. SD-WAN will relieve the burden on IT Departments as many features are automated, such as network alerts and analytics reporting. Educational institutions gain full visibility into the network through SD-WAN orchestration, even when multiple campuses and endpoints are being connected.
The role of a managed network solution
As we begin to transition to a post-pandemic life, hybrid approaches to learning for universities and schools are still being explored. With the support of SD-WAN, and the significant performance benefits that software-defined networking technologies can offer, it’s clear deployment as a fully managed service should be top of mind.
Working with a partner for managed network services enables institutions to leverage the support of an experienced service provider that can assist in everything from network design, implementation, management and preventative monitoring, to gathering quotes from access partners, and ensuring your network strategy fits your goals.
SD-WAN will not only seek to tackle issues that have arisen with the explosion of cloud-enabled learning, equipping schools with a secure and agile network will prepare them to face new challenges in uncertain times, without compromising students’ education.SD-WAN will allow schools to improve the quality of digital teaching, and more importantly, focus solely on their mission of bringing the best educational opportunities possible to students.
Get a free network assessment from our SD-WAN expert team to learn more about how SD-WAN can enable a digital first campus in your learning institution today.