Case Study: NETGEAR Wireless Technology at Stargate School

CASE STUDY: K-12 EDUCATION
CHARTER SCHOOL USES NETGEAR® PROSAFE® WIRELESS
SYSTEM TO FACILITATE THEIR GROWING TECHNOLOGY NEEDS
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1994, Stargate School is a parent-run charter school for intellectually gifted learners.
Originally serving children from Kindergarten through the eighth grade, last year the school expanded its
charter to also include a high school. In addition, the student population has grown from 550 students to
its current enrollment of 1,200 and is forecast to reach 1,600 students in the next few years. To facilitate
this growth, Stargate recently constructed a new 3-building campus; one to serve its Kindergarten
through fifth grade students and two for its sixth through twelfth grade students. While this growth
has provided exciting changes for the school as well as its parent community, it has also highlighted
some gaps and presented challenges when it comes to serving the school’s connectivity requirements.
As Stargate began planning its campus expansion, the school called Xcelitek, an IT and Managed Service
Provider that has supported their existing IT environment since 2004, to help them configure a wireless
system that would fit their needs, as well as their budget.
PROBLEM/OBJECTIVE
OUTDATED SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE AND UNRELIABLE
The growing student population, widespread use of technology-based instruction in the classroom, and
the school’s bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy had stretched beyond the capabilities of Stargate’s
existing physical infrastructure; it was incapable of supporting more than 10/100 Mbps and wireless was
spotty at best. “One of the primary challenges is that the school had an outdated network that simply
wasn’t capable of supporting the performance and capacity requirements of a modern wireless system,”
says Dale Briggs, President/General Manager at Xcelitek. “In addition, many of the network components
had been donated over the years, so we were also contending with a lot of mismatched hardware.”
Stargate’s network was plagued with constant bottlenecks, which was a continuous source of frustration
for faculty and students. “Schools are highly regimented and scheduled,” says Dale. “Everybody starts
and moves at the same time, so the potential for traffic bottlenecks is huge. Every 90 minutes the entire
student population would take their devices and move to a different location, simultaneously transferring
the traffic load from one access point to another.”
CUSTOMER NAME:
Stargate School
SIZE: 1,200+ Students
INDUSTRY: K-12 Education
COMPANY WEBSITE:
community.stargateschool.org
GEOGRAPHIC REGION:
Thornton, Colorado
PARTNER NAME:
Xcelitek
INDUSTRY: IT and Managed
Services Provider
COMPANY WEBSITE:
www.xcelitek.com
GEOGRAPHIC REGION:
Westminster, Colorado
www.netgear.com
NETGEAR checked all the boxes,
and did it within budget. We
were able to get everything on
the school’s list of needs without
having to make compromises.
Dale Briggs, President/General Manager
Xcelitek
CASE STUDY:
Stargate School