The client is an international school system with more than 500 schools and thousands of students on its network. Students have access to the network and the internet around the clock, and the system's secure intranet is reachable externally so coursework can be completed and parents and teachers can check on student progress. The system runs its programs for students, parents and staff over the internet, with 7 Gbps of WAN capacity for internet access and each school linked to the datacenter at 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

The school system's IT department needed more reliable and efficient use of the bandwidth it already had, and a network better able to cope with surges in demand. Its internet access ran over seven separate 1 Gbps fiber connections. Because the lines were not load balanced, traffic could not be spread across them, and they offered no redundancy should a line fail.

Demand is constant. Students have network and internet access 24/7, and the secure intranet is reached externally by students completing coursework and by parents and teachers checking progress. Surges often arrive in the evenings as well as during the school day, when access to permitted websites adds strain on the available resources.

Reliability mattered most for students taking online examinations, who need a dependable network and automatic failover so they do not lose their progress and can receive up-to-date materials. Students also access school files remotely, traffic that would normally overload individual lines without load balancing across multiple connections. Downtime was both expensive and inconvenient.

The school system aggregated its dissimilar lines through a FatPipe SD-WAN networking appliance, using the combined speed of the connections while achieving a high level of WAN redundancy. FatPipe's SD-WAN product load balances all available connections and provides automatic failover that reroutes traffic to the remaining lines if one fails. For students sitting online examinations, that failover prevents lost progress and keeps up-to-date materials flowing, and remote access to school files, which previously risked overloading single lines, is now spread across the bonded connections.

The result is a more available network that is better able to cope with increases in overall demand at any time of day, including the additional workload from students, parents and staff using the system's internet-based programs. FatPipe describes the solution as fully upgradeable, so the school system can add further connections, such as more fiber links, without major changes to its infrastructure.

FatPipe characterises the appliance as a "set it and forget it" solution. With the SD-WAN in place, the IT department's attention can shift away from connections and toward more important strategic issues.

• Seven separate 1 Gbps fiber connections aggregated into one load-balanced, redundant WAN through FatPipe SD-WAN
• Automatic failover reroutes traffic to available lines, eliminating expensive and inconvenient downtime
• Students taking online examinations keep a reliable connection and do not lose progress during a line failure
• Remote access to school files no longer overloads individual lines
• Additional fiber connections can be added without major infrastructure changes
• IT staff can focus on strategic issues rather than managing connections