Dallas ISD's Wide Area Network remains fastest among districts nationwide

Though a recent media report suggested otherwise, schools in the Dallas Independent School District continue to have access to a high-speed wide area network unsurpassed by any school district in the country.

Dallas ISD’s network is supported by a non-shared bandwidth of 20 gigabytes per second to each of the district’s 224 campuses, far surpassing a goal by President Barack Obama to have a network of 1GB per second to every campus by 2018.

A media report last week suggested that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a stronger network because it has an Internet bandwidth of 30Gbps, with plans to upgrade it to 60Gbps. In reality, that figure represents LAUSD’s bandwidth from the Internet to the district hub, not back out to campuses themselves.

According to a spokesperson for LAUSD, the bandwidth extended to each campus from LAUSD’s hub varies from 50Mbps to 1Gbps. Dallas ISD’s bandwidth is 20 to 400 times larger, so large, in fact, that the high-speed access in each Dallas ISD classroom exceeds the capacity of some entire schools in LAUSD.

So why is this important? It means that Dallas ISD’s capacity allows for computers and wireless devices to reach the Internet that much faster in the classroom, giving students and teachers quicker access to learning tools online.

“We have a great deal of respect for our colleagues at LAUSD and their inbound capacity is impressive,” said Gray Salada, Dallas ISD’s Chief Technology Officer. “But we have yet to find any wide area network in the country operated by a school district that is stronger than the one in Dallas ISD.”