Case Study: NETGEAR Wireless Technology at Blundell's School

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CASE STUDY:
Blundell’s School
CASE STUDY: EDUCATION
NETGEAR CONNECTS THE DOTS TO ENABLE WIRELESS LEARNING
THROUGHOUT HISTORIC 100-ACRE DEVON SCHOOL.
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1604, Blundell’s is a co-educational independent school for over 800 full, weekly and flexi
boarding and day pupils from ages 3 to 18. The school combines strong academic achievement and
excellent facilities with the best pastoral care. Blundell’s is situated on the outskirts of the small market
town of Tiverton in Devon and occupies two adjoining sites covering some 100 acres.
PROBLEM/OBJECTIVE
Over the last ten years, the school governors have invested heavily in IT to enable it to expand its
ICT facilities available to pupils, teachers and support staff. There are currently over 600 computers
connected to the school network. The facilities at Blundell’s School are centred around the purpose-built
Popham Centre. Within this centre are 80 networked PCs with printers, scanners and digital cameras
available for those needing them. In addition to this central facility, there are seven other ICT rooms
around the campus allowing whole class use of computing facilities.
The IT department at Blundell’s School is pushing for the use of revolutionary technology throughout the
school to meet the modern day needs of teachers and students alike. “There was the desire to see all class
rooms, boarding houses and common rooms having access to the network wirelessly. However, the sheer
scale of the site, coupled with the thick stone walls of many of the buildings, was proving problematic,”
said Martin Dyer, Director of IT, Blundell’s School.
“We were increasingly experiencing a lot of connectivity issues with our legacy system. This led to us
spending a lot of time having to reset our access points which could be an arduous task. Because of the
scale of our site, it would often take us a 20 minute round trip to get to it, fix it and return to the office,”
explained Martin. “It is imperative that our network remains online, as we have a lot of boarding students
that rely on it to not only undertake their studies effectively, but also to communicate with their families.”
In addition to the 600 computers, laptops, fixed consoles and staff smartphones connected to the
network, there are countless other devices being brought onto school grounds by the students
themselves. “The number of devices needing wireless access has grown exponentially and the legacy
network simply wasn’t able to handle it,” said Martin. “Coupled with this, it had become a sizeable use of
time and resources, as students were constantly bringing their devices to the IT department to get them
linked onto the network.”
COMPANY NAME:
Blundell’s School
COMPANY SIZE:
Over 800 pupils
INDUSTRY:
Education
COMPANY WEBSITE:
www.blundells.org
GEOGRAPHIC REGION:
Tiverton, Devon
We felt that not only did NETGEAR
provide a very cost eective solution
for us, but we were also particularly
impressed by its deep reaching
customer service and willingness to
undertake a free site survey for us.
Martin Dyer,
Director of IT, Blundell’s School
www.netgear.co.uk