For Louisville, Kentucky’s own historic Presentation Academy (PA), a Catholic school for girls that has been around since the 1830s, it was time to modernize connections in the school’s network. A rapidly evolving student body and bandwidth demands didn’t do much to minimize the challenges the school faced. With older solutions in place that were inconsistent, unorganized, and difficult to manage, the next steps fell to Paula Samuels – a “one-woman operation” in her department at PA – to identify what solution(s) were required and determine the best technology provider or vendors to help get the school’s network on the right track.
Samuels started off the best way she knew using the school’s existing solution from a leading networking vendor. Placing access points wherever she had access to an ethernet cable and spreading them around the building, she said felt like a bit of a “hot mess.” But with limited budgets common in education and a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy that meant a wide array of different devices spread throughout the school at any given moment, Samuels knew that a better solution was crucial. After attending a tradeshow and learning about fiber connections as an ideal solution for schools like PA – and with an existing fiber connection upgrade from years past that still wasn’t performing as it should be – Samuels knew it was time to find a true partner to help support to school in finding a solid network solution.