Nothing disrupts a classroom faster than a slow network. If your students are not fully engaged with their network-connected device, they start to fidget. They longer the delay, the more disruption. And if the stoppage lasts longer than a few minutes, the daily lesson can be irretrievably lost. So to keep your student's heads down and brains turned on, you need to ensure that your network is equal to the task.

But students aren't the only ones for whom time is valuable. Your staff don't want to sit there waiting for the screen to refresh, your teachers want to be able to plan lessons and take care of admin tasks quickly and any guests – such as parents and Board members – that take advantage of your secure BYOD / Wi-Fi service want a satisfying user experience.

Fast networks require faster security

With the growing availability of super-fast fibre-based educational networks, New Zealand schools have the opportunity to tap into an entire world of on-line resources. Your challenge is to ensure that there are no ‘bottlenecks' or barriers between the internet and the individual user's devices. You can do this by combining a fast and secure gateway, well-sized servers and storage, low-latency switches and suitably-configured end user devices.

A fast and secure network starts at the gateway. “Today's secure next generation firewalls / internet gateways have been designed to support the massive transmission requirements of multi-national data centers, telecommunications carriers and cloud service providers,” says Andrew Khan, Fortinet Senior Business Manager at Ingram Micro, New Zealand's largest distributor of Fortinet's network security solutions.

“With throughput capacities approaching 300+ Gbps and an array of 40/100 GbE ports and ultra-high 10Gbe port density, these secure gateways are protecting and enabling some of NZ's largest organisations as they support literally tens of thousands of concurrent, processing-intensive sessions with virtually nil latency.

So no matter how resource-intensive your school's network is, Fortinet's next generation secure firewalls can scale up or down to provide the processing power and throughput you need at a price you can afford.

More than security

But it's not simply security that a Next Generation Firewall provides.

“Fortinet's smart gateways provide a host of other capabilities over and above security,” continues Khan. “For instance they support ‘load-balancing' which speeds up the system by allocating processing power to specific applications in near real time. Plus they feature an interactive dashboard that allows the IT manager to monitor network activity and identify any potential issues before they cause any problems.

And there are many deployment options including installation at your school, ‘cloud-based' where your applications and data are hosted by a third-party or a hybrid model that caters to your exact requirements and resources.

Your school needs speed. For learning, for teaching and for administrating. While challenging, your school's requirements pale next to the massive throughput required by governments, telcos, data centers and ISPs. Fortinet secures these enterprises in New Zealand and globally. And they can support your school's network. Let us show you how.

For further information, please contact:

Hugo Hutchinson, Business Development Manager at Ingram Micro

hugo.hutchinson@ingrammicro.com

P: 09-414-0261 | M: 021-245-8276