CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET

The E-Rate and other funding resources can make access to the World Wide Web more affordable than ever before. Unfortunately, more funding hasn't made the web of connectivity technologies any easier to untangle. How should you connect students to the Internet? In this article, we'll introduce some of the key tools needed to develop your own connections to the Internet.

Making the Case for the Internet.
Many futurists see our planet evolving toward a global community, supported by ever-improving communications technologies like the Internet. How will tomorrow's adults cope with this rich, interconnected world? Their effectiveness in society tomorrow may well depend upon classrooms of today.

Getting Online: Web Spinning 101.
There are literally dozens of technologies that can be used to connect a single school or an entire district to the Internet. For even the most experienced technology professionals, the process of getting to the Internet can seem quite intimidating. Getting online is basically a matter of determining who will manage the connection, and what technology will you use to make that connection.

Connecting directly from the desktop.
Accessing the World Wide Web can be as simple as connecting your computer's modem to a telephone line and installing software from an online service or Internet Service Provider, or as sophisticated as shared access across a multi-location set of local area networks (LANs). Some schools can also elect a middle road. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) connections can provide single computers or small groups with low-maintenance Internet access. Adding ISDN connections to your single workstations or network provides greater bandwidth than standard phone line modems. However, this technology also requires new equipment (special modems, telephone sets and routers) and a more complex installation than networkbased solutions.

Shared network access.
If your district already connects multiple schools into a Wide Area Network, getting to the Internet is just a matter of adding a new connection from your district "control center" to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) of your choice. This method of reaching the Internet carries the greatest price tag for initial installation. However, this larger up-front investment in time and equipment can yield the highest access speeds, greater flexibility for remote access and easy expansion as your connectivity needs grow. Many new student or staff stations can access the Internet through your WAN from inside or outside the classroom, and can utilize some of the latest desktop technologies with a small investment in additional connectivity equipment. Let's look at the factors that influence installation decisions at the network access level.

Fundamental connectivity issues.
As you plan your modem, ISDN or networkbased Internet access, keep in mind that connecting to the Internet involves two fundamental issues: Bandwidth (how much data you can move) and capacity (how many people can get the data at once). Most of the equipment used to create or maintain a connection to the Internet is designed to address one or both of these needs. Let's examine some of the more widely used methods of connecting to the Internet. Each method increases in complexity, starting with direct connections and moving forward to the larger environment of LAN/WAN building, cabling, data distribution and filtering access.

Basic connections.
The simplest way to reach the Internet is through a single connection to your service provider via telephone or ISDN line, just like you might have in your own home. The advantages of this method are pretty obvious, you only need one data 'pipe,' to get the job done so installation and equipment purchase costs will be lower than in LAN or WAN-based Internet access. The drawback: without additional equipment, only one PC can be online at a time (very low capacity). And, there's only so much bandwidth, a maximum of 56 kbps with standard modems, slightly less than twice that amount using ISDN, that you can carry at a time. What happens when you need a lot of data for a lot of students at the same time?

Access for everyone: Networking.
Beyond the basic advantages of sharing applications, storage space and hardware resources, your network can also serve as a conduit for data from the World Wide Web. The distance between connecting all the students and teachers in one building to linking several school LANs by high-speed data lines into a district Wide Area Network (WAN) to linking the whole district to the Internet is surprisingly short. It's all a matter of making the connections and putting the right equipment in place to transmit, translate and filter Internet data.

Getting wired.
As your data needs grow, think about the capacity of the wires that connect student workstations, and ultimately your main data feed. For your internal wiring, you have a choice of 10 or 100 MB capacities in cables that can utilize Ethernet (a protocol that defines how data will be moved through the cable) and can invest in fiber optic cabling for high capacity connections between network segments. And don't forget the additional hardware you need to make those internal connections work. Hubs allow many PCs to link to a single relay station, which can then pass data back and forth between your PCs and servers (and eventually to the Internet) over a single wire. These hubs define the segments of your network, and can be linked by fiber optic trunks (high-capacity pipes sometimes referred to as backbones) to help you quickly pass data traffic between floors of a building or across other physical boundaries.

Now let's look at the connection between your network and the outside world. How will you connect to your local Internet service provider? Will you want to lease part or all of a T1 or T3 line for maximum data throughput? That will probably be the case if you are investing in connections for more than one location, such as in a district Wide Area Network, or WAN. If so, you'll need to invest in some more equipment to translate between data transmission formats and help you manage access to the 'Net. These lines have high capacities that would quickly overwhelm any PC directly connected to them. To step down the data flow rate to a speed your network can handle, you'll have to provide special flow regulators called Channel Service Units/Data Service Units (CSU/DSUs) between your ISP and district and between district and school to keep from 'bursting' those data pipes.

Long-distance links.
When your technology plan serves more than one campus or building, some extra hardware and cabling is necessary to get the job done. How do you connect every student in a multi-school district to the Internet? Let's take a look at that connection, and then trace the data back from this District location to PCs in the more remote schools.

Piping in the data.
Many ISPs would recommend that you bring all of your data into one location, then distribute the data from primary connection point out to your other schools. T1 and T3 lines are frequently used for high-speed data transmission between networks. These speedy connection lines can be leased from your local telephone company (and in some cases, your Internet service provider) to move data from the Internet to your district and from your district to outlying schools. As an added bonus, they handle both voice and data traffic, so you may be able to realize a cost savings on telephone services by running both voice and data over the same set of inter-school links.

Data management.
Throughout your network, from the district level to remote sites, servers can help your students and staff make the most of the Internet. Servers perform similar roles in interacting with the Internet that they perform as managers of your internal network. The size and specifications of your servers are largely contingent on many factors such as the number of users, future growth expectations, network band width, applications, required storage and availability requirements, to mention a few.

For proxy server and electronic mail management, investing in servers that provide the highest level of scalability features such as additional hard drives, processors and memory as well as data backup features and RAID is the best approach. RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) allows you to add redundancy and performance with a set of smaller drives instead of using one large drive to store all of your data. By striping or mirroring data across multiple drives and then adding redundancy, you can get the highest performance and fault tolerance, allowing for the loss of a drive while continuing to operate with access to all of the data. Not only will these scalability features provide the flexibility to expand within a growing network environment, it will also help optimize the total cost of owning and operating your network over the life of the products. The amount and configuration of servers you need to manage your Internet access depends upon the applications you want to run; there are no hard and fast rules.

Filtering and access control.
Finally, you'll need to protect students and network alike from viruses, unauthorized access and inappropriate content. Your school or district can use proxy servers and firewalls to help control the type of data requested and protect from viruses or tampering, respectively.

Bringing it all together.
No single article can give you all of the information you need to connect to the World Wide Web. However, now that you've been introduced to some of the key technologies involved in making the Internet connection, you've made the first step towards opening new worlds of learning for your district's students. And beyond the learning experience, open up a whole new potential for transformational change.

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