Network News
The network has gone through quite a change over the past year. Several network upgrade projects have been completed and more are ongoing. A catalyst for some of these changes was the Idaho Student Information Systems (ISIMS) with overall benefits for the school district.
First, our present network wireless backbone is being replaced with fiber optic cable. The first phase was completed in May 2004 with fiber connections between the Kuna High School and Teed and Hubbard Elementary. We are in the midst of the second phase of connecting the high school to Kuna Middle School. A huge thanks to the Maintenance Department for running the conduit to connect Kuna High School and Kuna Middle School. This phase has a tentative completion date of early winter. The next phase of fiber connectivity will involve connecting Ross and Indian Creek Elementary Schools to the middle school.
Second, every school district server was upgraded to Novell 6.5, which in some cases, required new hardware to be purchased. This project started over the summer and all school servers were completed just before school started. The District Office server upgrade was completed in early November, thus finishing this project.
Third, a new and improved staff email system was installed. The new system has more features, such as calendaring and web access, than the old email system and was also completed over the summer.
Finally, the network core has a new router and two new core switches providing redundancy, faster switching speeds, and more port density. The switches have numerous fiber connection ports providing the district a centralized fiber connection point allowing all schools to terminate at a central location, while the new router provides faster routing and a second port for our additional T1 line. The second T1 line is a dedicated line and was added to increase our bandwidth and ability of accessing the ISIMS datacenter. These improvements provide teachers and staff a substantially faster access speed to the ISIMS database.
More network changes are in the works so stayed turned