Washington Township Deploys School-Wide Multimedia Educational Network Based on 3Com ATM Solutions; New $1.3 Million Network Delivers Advanced Video, CD-ROM and Internet Learning Opportunities for 10,000 K-12 students in New Jersey's Delaware Valley

Business Wire, Sept 12, 1997

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 12, 1997--3Com Corp. (NASDAQ:COMS) today announced that Washington Township, a fast-growing community of 48,000 residents in New Jersey's Delaware Valley, is implementing an advanced asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network standardized on 3Com systems. The new multimedia network, according to local sources, is the largest ever in the Delaware Valley.

Completed this month, the new $1.3 million network will provide voice, video and data services to 10,000 students and 800 faculty members in the township's 12 district-wide schools. These include a kindergarten facility, six elementary schools, three middle schools and a 3,000-student high school. Driven by 3Com CoreBuilder(TM) 7000 High-Function ATM switches and 3Com workgroup devices at each school, the network will provide students with access to hundreds of educational videos and multimedia CD-ROM titles at roughly 15 times the speed of the district's former network.

The ATM network will deliver these applications to a teaching workstation, a television monitor and up to 12 desktop computers in every classroom and to 35 multimedia computer labs across the district. The network will eventually provide students with rapid Internet access to conduct research, a "homework help line" and their own Groupwise program email address.

"Our new ATM network underscores Washington Township's commitment to provide our young people with the best possible education to prepare them for college and successful careers," said Thomas Flemming, the school district's assistant superintendent. "Using 3Com's architecture, we're offering students advanced curricula in everything from basic computer literacy to business, science, reading, mathematics, the arts and more," he added.

"The Washington Township network is a model of what schools can accomplish using a high-speed enterprise architecture," noted David Katz, 3Com worldwide education manager. "This access to computer-based learning is enabling the district to harness the most effective multimedia tools available to educate students at every level of the system."

Architecture for 21st Century Education

Launched this June, Washington Township's ATM network was developed under the leadership of school superintendent Robert Kern and Thomas Flemming, who engineered a 1996 referendum budgeting $50 million for new schools, school renovations and new educational technologies. Having formerly used fragmented shared Ethernet local area networks (LANs) in each school library, the district had to purchase software programs individually for each school.

As the demand for applications grew, response times slowed and administrators sought a new uniform architecture in each building that could extend multimedia learning programs from one to all schools within the district.

After evaluating ATM solutions from Bay Networks, Lucent Technologies and 3Com, the Township selected the 3Com CoreBuilder 7000 ATM/Ethernet switches and several 3Com Fast Ethernet and switched Ethernet edge devices. The school district purchased 3Com 10 BASE-T, 10/100 BASE-T Network Interface Cards (NICs) for PCs and Macintosh systems and ATMLink(TM) PCI 155 Mbps NICs to provide ATM links to servers. Washington Township is also using 3Com's Transcend network management application, which proactively manages and monitors the entire network from a single desktop console. 3Com's Guardian(sm) service and support provide the school district with seven day, 24 hour coverage, software updates and advance hardware replacement.

"3Com gave us a suite of price/performance features that let each school access the networked resources of every other school for the first time," said Jim Dubois, the school district's director of technical services.

"The CoreBuilder 7000 switches' redundant power supplies, dual switching engines and migration path to higher-speed OC-12 ATM provided a reliable, scalable architecture to satisfy our long term needs. 3Com's Transcend network management application offered us proactive and comprehensive network management. The networking company also provided expert engineers who tirelessly and effectively served us during implementation and who will continue to support us via our Guardian service plan."

Advanced Multimedia Applications

The greatest assets of Washington Township's new ATM network are the applications it provides to local students. Elementary and middle school students are learning computer skills through Sunburst's Type to Learn program, mastering world geography using Broderbund's Carmen Sandiego program and creating their own Web sites with Macromedia's Hyperstudio program. High school students are benefiting from business programs, such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works. They also are gaining valuable knowledge from multimedia science packages, such as Discovery Communications' Beyond Planet Earth and Broderbund's Discover Space. Multimedia programs like Davidson's Mathblaster are giving high school students a firmer grasp on algebra and geometry, and products like Corel's Draw are providing new platforms for exploring the art of drawing and sketching.