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Ben Seaberry
La Cañada Unified School District

Does your school have Internet access? Be careful how you answer.

During Internet workshops over the past two years, I have asked many L.A. County teachers and principals that question and, though the usual answers range from a definite maybe to absolutely, most schools' Internet access consists of nothing more than a connection at a single computer in a library or classroom.

The question is really somewhat broader - can most computers at your school simultaneously access the Internet?

The difference is a big one. I know. I have the responsibility to connect most of the computers in the La Cañada Unified School District to the 'Net.

When I became the district technology coordinator of the LCUSD, one of my first tasks was to "wire" the four schools in the district. Sound simple?

It involves providing Internet access, on demand at any time, for every computer in every classroom, library, computer lab, and office in every school. It also involves such technical and social issues as how each school connects to the 'Net, how each computer ties in to that connection, why the Internet should be accessible at school, and how it will be used by staff and students.

These are just some of the questions that should be answered before connecting schools to cyberspace. Here's how we answered them at LCUSD.

Warning: the following two paragraphs contain material intended for technically mature audiences. If you are offended by material of a technical nature, references are provided at the end of the article.

The district office network gets its Internet access from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the Internet Service Provider for dozens of districts throughout L.A. County. We pay an annual fee based on the bandwidth of our connection - how much information we can communicate in a second.

Currently, we have a 56 kbps (kilobit per second) frame relay connection that will probably be upgraded to a T1 circuit (1.5 megabit per second) before too long.

A CSU/DSU and router are necessary on both ends of the frame relay connection (provided, installed, and maintained by LACOE) and, in 1996, Pacific Bell began installing a 128 kbps ISDN Centrex line, which is free through the Education First Initiative, between each of the four schools and the district office.

The Centrex line is free for the first year, then billed at a flat monthly rate. An ISDN router and NT1 is planned on both ends of each ISDN line between the schools and the district office.

Each school's computer is designed to connected to a school-wide ethernet local area network (LAN). One of the most important components of that design requires conformance to the EIA/TIA 568 cabling and connector specifications.

Those specs call for either category-five, unshielded, twisted pair cabling at maximum cable lengths of 100 meters from the hub to the computer or fiber optic cabling (at much greater cable lengths), also with category-five connectors.

This will ensure that network cards and hubs can be upgraded to a bandwidth of 100 megabits per second or higher in the future.

Students, teachers, administrators, and support staff benefit from researching topics on the Internet and sharing school-specific information on an Intranet created for internal use. Students can access current information, exchange e-mail with on-line experts, collaborate on student projects around the globe, and publish their work.

Teachers can share resources with each other, accessing educational databases, and use e-mail to communicate with stakeholders. Administrators and support staff can communicate with staff and students over the district Intranet and access grant opportunities over the Internet.

These are just some of the vast on-line resources that are available to the entire educational community. Soon, connecting to the Internet will not be an option for schools - it will be a mandate!

If you would like to learn more about technical networking issues, I recommend "Switched and Fast Ethernet: How it Works and How to Use It," by Robert Breyer and Sean Riley (Ziff-Davis Press, 1995); "Networking Personal Computers with TCP/IP," by Craig Hunt (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1995); "K-12 Network Technology Planning Guide," by the California Department of Education (1994).

The first two books are available in technical bookstores, the third is available for a fee by calling 1-800-995-4099 or free on the Internet at http://goldmine.cde.ca.gov/ftpbranch/retdiv/technology/K-12/K-12_home.html.