NETSCOUT Case Studies Public School District Ensures Quality Performance and End-User Experience for Remote Students With NETSCOUT

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	Public School District Ensures Quality Performance and End-User Experience for Remote Students With NETSCOUT NETSCOUT

Public School District Ensures Quality Performance and End-User Experience for Remote Students With NETSCOUT

NETSCOUT

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries	Education
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Human Resources
Use Cases	Remote Asset Management Remote Collaboration Remote Control
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services Data Science Services
Challenge	The school district faced challenges in ensuring a high-quality educational experience for remote students and teachers due to connectivity and bandwidth issues. The shift to 100% remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated upgrades to the district’s infrastructure and monitoring capabilities. The district had already implemented Infinite Campus as its Student Information System (SIS) but now needed to make that suite of applications and information accessible to teachers who chose to work remotely. In addition, the primary platform for remote learning was Webex and the ability to monitor this critical application’s performance and troubleshoot any issues needed to be greatly enhanced. The entire network infrastructure needed to be seen – from client edge, to network edge, to data center / cloud service edges, to both identify the location of any bottle necks, and to quickly determine if network or application, or even security issues, are at the bottom of any inadequate support for learning or administrative applications. Mean Time To Restore (MTTR) needed to be as short as possible. Read More
About Customer	The customer is a public school district that operates over 50 schools. They have been using NETSCOUT solutions for over ten years and recently had the opportunity to use funds from the federal CARES Act to address issues which surfaced when the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to shift to 100% remote learning for their students. The district is committed to ensuring that students and teachers have an end-user experience that is outstanding regardless of where they are physically located now, and in the future, as re-balancing to in classroom learning takes hold. Read More
Solution	The school district utilized the nGeniusONE Service Assurance solution with the addition of strategically deployed InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliances across its private data center environment, outside and inside the DMZ, to examine both inbound and outbound traffic. vSTREAM devices were selected to monitor the AZURE cloud & Dell VxRail implementation. Network traffic aggregation and distribution with nGenius Packet Flow Switches provided visibility into, and delivery of, packet data to monitoring tools such as the ISNG appliances for smart data edge monitoring and performance management throughout their data center. End-user experience assurance when using application services, whether web hosted, or through their data center, was achieved with smart data monitoring and smart analytics from nGeniusONE with ISNG appliances for application performance analysis. Extraneous traffic, such as streaming traffic from entertainment platforms, was easily detectable by nGeniusONE and blocked by content filtering or firewall devices. Accelerated troubleshooting and problem resolution, leveraging the entire NETSCOUT solution, reduced the MTTR for services by pinpointing the true source of degradations, outages, and errors throughout the transaction path, including the data center servers, the network itself and any associated VPNs. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Human Resources

Use Cases

Remote Asset Management

Remote Collaboration

Remote Control

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Data Science Services

Challenge

The school district faced challenges in ensuring a high-quality educational experience for remote students and teachers due to connectivity and bandwidth issues. The shift to 100% remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated upgrades to the district’s infrastructure and monitoring capabilities. The district had already implemented Infinite Campus as its Student Information System (SIS) but now needed to make that suite of applications and information accessible to teachers who chose to work remotely. In addition, the primary platform for remote learning was Webex and the ability to monitor this critical application’s performance and troubleshoot any issues needed to be greatly enhanced. The entire network infrastructure needed to be seen – from client edge, to network edge, to data center / cloud service edges, to both identify the location of any bottle necks, and to quickly determine if network or application, or even security issues, are at the bottom of any inadequate support for learning or administrative applications. Mean Time To Restore (MTTR) needed to be as short as possible.

About Customer

The customer is a public school district that operates over 50 schools. They have been using NETSCOUT solutions for over ten years and recently had the opportunity to use funds from the federal CARES Act to address issues which surfaced when the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to shift to 100% remote learning for their students. The district is committed to ensuring that students and teachers have an end-user experience that is outstanding regardless of where they are physically located now, and in the future, as re-balancing to in classroom learning takes hold.

Solution

The school district utilized the nGeniusONE Service Assurance solution with the addition of strategically deployed InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliances across its private data center environment, outside and inside the DMZ, to examine both inbound and outbound traffic. vSTREAM devices were selected to monitor the AZURE cloud & Dell VxRail implementation. Network traffic aggregation and distribution with nGenius Packet Flow Switches provided visibility into, and delivery of, packet data to monitoring tools such as the ISNG appliances for smart data edge monitoring and performance management throughout their data center. End-user experience assurance when using application services, whether web hosted, or through their data center, was achieved with smart data monitoring and smart analytics from nGeniusONE with ISNG appliances for application performance analysis. Extraneous traffic, such as streaming traffic from entertainment platforms, was easily detectable by nGeniusONE and blocked by content filtering or firewall devices. Accelerated troubleshooting and problem resolution, leveraging the entire NETSCOUT solution, reduced the MTTR for services by pinpointing the true source of degradations, outages, and errors throughout the transaction path, including the data center servers, the network itself and any associated VPNs.

Impact #1	Student and faculty-facing applications are now comprehensively monitored for performance and availability assurance.
Impact #2	Traffic activity is quickly and easily monitored from the data center and cloud to the edge of the network.
Impact #3	The teachers and administrators’ experiences have been improved with quick isolation of bottlenecks, which is made possible by maximizing IT efficiencies by using a single solution approach to truly pinpoint the source of disruptions and slowdowns, while reducing MTTR.

Impact #1

Student and faculty-facing applications are now comprehensively monitored for performance and availability assurance.

Impact #2

Traffic activity is quickly and easily monitored from the data center and cloud to the edge of the network.

Impact #3

The teachers and administrators’ experiences have been improved with quick isolation of bottlenecks, which is made possible by maximizing IT efficiencies by using a single solution approach to truly pinpoint the source of disruptions and slowdowns, while reducing MTTR.

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Overview

Public School District Ensures Quality Performance and End-User Experience for Remote Students With NETSCOUT

Operational Impact