Caching eliminates software update congestion and delivers much faster classroom content

Cairo American College strides to deliver '22nd Century' learning launch so students enjoy a state-of-the-art learning environment. Unfortunately, its internet connection was unable to keep up with demand, browsing was painfully slow. But it wasn't possible for the school to upgrade to a higher capacity link.

With a 58Mbps connection to support 800 students, 600 of which could be online at any one time, when students would try to download the same content at the start of a lesson, web access speed would become so slow that lesson plans were halted, or often abandoned altogether.

Congestion was also a problem whenever student devices downloaded sizeable operating system update files.

Before CACHEBOX - Cairo's 58 Mbps internet connection was saturated

After CACHEBOX - Up to 60% of all data is now being served from cache, including Apple and Windows updates. These files, along with classroom content like mathletics.com are being served up to 30 times faster from CACHEBOX. So update files clear the network faster and students and teachers get a significantly better online experience in class.

See how other international schools are benefitting from modern caching technologies. Read more case studies here.

Caching delivers 10 times more capacity than QIS' internet connection

Qatar International School was finding it hard to deliver reliable access to powerful e-learning tools for its 1,900 students. The schools' internet connection was routinely congested despite having been upgraded twice: initially 16Mbps eventually 50Mbps. Growing traffic and device numbers kept saturating their bandwidth.

Teachers and students would complain about slow connectivity; key video content was often unwatchable, disrupting lesson plans. Eventually YouTube had to be disabled in the classroom, simply to allow general access to the internet.

To guarantee fast, low cost access to content, Qatar turned to caching. With CACHEBOX, Qatar found a solution that avoids another bandwidth upgrade. It can now serve large amounts of content directly over its LAN, without downloading it from the internet - at lightning LAN speeds.

Now - at peak times, when whole classes access the same content at the same time - CACHEBOX is meeting demand at over 450Mbps. That's nearly 10 times the capacity of the school's actual bandwidth.

Aga Khan Academies freed from software update congestion

Like many private and international schools Aga Khan Academies (AKA) has fully embraced e-learning and has high expectations of higher student engagement and improved results. But for e-Learning to be effective fast and reliable access to digital content is required.

However, AKA schools suffered slow web access. In Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique and Kenya the high cost of bandwidth meant coping with low bandwidth capacity - while in India, despite bandwidth being affordable, capacity was being dominated by device updates, leaving little capacity for learning content.

AKA then discovered that - in every school - as students connected, daily, their devices would randomly update. And not just one but whole groups of devices, often downloading the same 6 or 8GB software update that would download slowly.

These would hog the connection - often for the entire school day - making the internet slower and slower.

That's when AKA turned to caching. Storing and serving software updates from cache not only frees up precious bandwidth but speeds up delivery, as updates are served via the LAN - at LAN speeds.

Deploying CACHEBOX appliances had just the impact AKA were hoping for.

Now, large software updates from Apple, Microsoft are served locally, freeing up bandwidth by as much as 83% (table, left).

CACHEBOX - a dedicated schools-caching appliance - is helping 1000s of schools worldwide to guarantee speed in the classroom. See how caching can offload your peak traffic and instantly improve your learning experience for less.

See how other international schools are benefitting from modern caching technologies. Read more case studies here.

Caching delivers 10 times more capacity than QIS' internet connection

Qatar International School was finding it hard to deliver reliable access to powerful e-learning tools for its 1,900 students. The schools' internet connection was routinely congested despite having been upgraded twice: initially 16Mbps eventually 50Mbps. Growing traffic and device numbers kept saturating their bandwidth.

Teachers and students would complain about slow connectivity; key video content was often unwatchable, disrupting lesson plans. Eventually YouTube had to be disabled in the classroom, simply to allow general access to the internet.

To guarantee fast, low cost access to content, Qatar turned to caching. With CACHEBOX, Qatar found a solution that avoids another bandwidth upgrade. It can now serve large amounts of content directly over its LAN, without downloading it from the internet - at lightning LAN speeds.

Now - at peak times, when whole classes access the same content at the same time - CACHEBOX is meeting demand at over 450Mbps. That's nearly 10 times the capacity of the school's actual bandwidth.

See how other international schools are benefitting from modern caching technologies. Read more case studies here.