Ensure that your staff and students have constant access to appropriate resources, while still protecting confidential information, and maintaining privacy.

Providing appropriate access to network resources for individual staff and students can seems complex, requiring multiple sets of privileges levels for resources to maintain information confidentiality and privacy. Education provides offer increasingly advanced online resources, but maintain critical student and curriculum information, which must be kept private protected from malicious use.

We will provide product support Network Access Control (NAC), a leading-light of the networking world, providing complete control over user access to the network. Users can have different level of access, allowing for availability for students, teachers and administration staff.

NAC also checks a user’s adherence to network security policies before granting network access, proactively stopping threats before they can enter the network.

NAC has introduced identity –based networking, which is superior to previous methods of controlling online information access. NAC’s automated nature is real benefit for busy IT staff, as it simplifies complex administration tasks.

Many leading network vendors have implemented NAC solutions in their products such as Microsoft, Symantec and Sophos.

Provide secure network access to students and staff anywhere, anytime, both on and off the campus, including roaming wireless access.

Wireless networking has increased exponentially in recent years, with demand for access to online applications anytime, anywhere. This is seen in the prevalence of new smart phones, tablets and gaming devices with built in Wi-Fi capability. All new laptop computers now have wireless built-in as standard – an expensive addition just a few years ago.

As young people are typically the early adopters of the latest technology, today’s students increasingly expect that their home and school or campus will provide wireless access. Wireless is also imperative for teachers and lecturers, who often make use of multiple rooms, theatres and other teaching spaces, yet require continual network access.

Furthermore, you must ensure that staff and students have the same level of access wherever they choose to connect to the network as more and more advanced high demand applications are made available on education networks. Wireless networking adds a further dimension that must be considered to keep mobile users securely connected, while not allowing access that would compromise the privacy of certain resources and sets of data.

Mentorworld wired and wireless solutions utilize features such as NAC and tri-authentication to provide secure network access from anywhere on campus. Lecturers using multiple rooms over the course of a day can be assured that they will have instant access to their presentations and other media from any location. Students who access the network via their own laptops can gain the appropriate access to online information and the Internet.

Tri-authentication

Authentication options on switches include alternatives to IEEE 802.1x port-based authentication, such as web authentication to enable roaming and guest access, and MAC authentication for end points that do not have an IEEE 802.1x supplicant. All three authentication methods – IEEE 802.1x, MAC-based and Web-based, can be enabled simultaneously on the same port (tri-authentication). This ensures uniform inspection of all users and devices wishing to gain access to the network, maximizing security.

Secure connection to online resources and the Internet, protecting both the network and students from inappropriate material and malicious threats, while minimizing administration overhead.

The need to maintain network security for all users, devices and applications in an education network is a major administrative overhead facing IT staff, who are tasked with keeping everything running efficiently. We have a number of advanced features to ease or automate network administration tasks, greatly reducing this burden. Simplifying and automating the management of staff and students’ online resource use, from all locations across the school or campus, ensures that you maintain uniform security. Plus, NAC provides – and automates – the ability to guarantee that a user’s security status meets with current policies.

Control of network addresses used by computers and other devices, checking users’ identities and managing network traffic volume and congestion are all time-consuming tasks. Mentorworld have conceptualized ‘Network in a Box’, which automates several network administration tasks by integrating services directly into advanced network switching products. This reduces the load on IT staff and increases security.

Maintenance and configuration of network equipment is greatly simplified with an Industry Standard Command Line Interface (CLI. This keeps training requirements for IT staff at a minimum, and reduces both your network management complexity and deployment costs. A Web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) also ensures a user friendly way to monitor and configure your network.

Advanced Value-Added Services

Support of new e-learning technologies such as streaming video seen in multiple locations simultaneously, video conferencing, distance learning, and remote network access. All provided within often constrained IT budgets.

Modern schools and campuses use multimedia in many forms. Lectures on demand, distance learning, video conferencing and in-class streaming video are just some of the network intensive applications that can place strain on your network infrastructure.

The ability to simultaneously view video from centralized servers in a number of locations is made possible with Mentorworld leading multicast features, allowing high quality video streaming which is controlled for the most efficient delivery – minimizing the amount of network bandwidth consumed.

As online applications become more media rich and bandwidth intensive, high availability for network resources is mandatory. Advanced switches that include dual power supplies, hot swappable expansion modules and robust software features ensure that both hardware and software continue functioning under the highest load.

Technology has created tremendous opportunities for today’s students. The addition of video and other advanced services to the standard data network has increased the need for extremely high resource availability. Managing traffic flow and volume on the network is something Mentorworld switching solutions are especially good at, with advanced high availability features like Virtual Chassis Stacking (VCStack™) and Ethernet Protection Switched Rings (EPSRing™). The wide portfolio of products supporting these features means that there is a powerful solution available for any size network.

Another value added service that has become increasingly important in today’s connected world is remote access to the network – staff need to have access to shared resources even when they are not on campus. When working from home or on a field trip, the ability to access files on school servers, or from shared education networks, can be a real time saver.

Secure, high-speed remote VPN access enables staff to work anywhere and still feel directly connected to the campus network. The knowledge that they can be just as productive in lesson planning and research off-site as on-site is very liberating for staff, and enables them to get that work done at times and places that work best for them. Our secure routers can encrypt and firewall hundreds of remote access sessions at the same time, making them ideal VPN gateways for even the largest educational institutions. The VPN service within the routers is completely interoperable with the standard Private Network Connection settings in Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X – making it very simple to set up staff laptops for secure remote access.

The exponential improvements in the power of digital technologies have been remarkably consistent for over 40 years, but the economic effects of these advances are much larger in recent years. Digitization has led to an acceleration in productivity growth in western economies overall, and particularly for the schools that use information technology most intensively. The most effective schools have reorganized the way they make decisions, interact with students and parents, and innovate to take advantage of the digital revolution, creating millions of dollars of intangible organizational assets in the process.

FOCUS

The increasing digitization of academic activities will make possible three important trends, each of which has significant implications for innovation:

• Faster and cheaper teaching experimentation;
• More widespread and easier sharing of observations and ideas.

While the net effect of digitization will boost productivity and create millions of naira of new wealth, the school authority and the parents (sponsors of the students) will benefit equally.