Meeting Digital and Technology Standards: Network Switching

As part of our ongoing digital standards series, this article explores the essential requirements for network switching infrastructure in schools, covering performance, security and resilience

If your school is considering upgrading or replacing its network infrastructure, understanding the required standards for performance, security and resilience is critical. Network switches form the core of your school’s connectivity, acting as the central hubs that connect devices, servers and users.

Most schools transition to new network solutions because existing systems fail to meet performance expectations or have become obsolete. Switching to a new network can enhance performance, improve security and provide scalability for future needs. However, it requires careful planning, collaboration with providers and adherence to established standards to ensure minimal disruption to daily school activities.

Switch Management

You will need to ensure that your supplier or in-house support team verifies that switches deliver a minimum of 1Gbps connectivity to user devices at the desktop level. Additionally, confirm that higher-speed (multi-gigabit) ports are available to support high-bandwidth devices and infrastructure equipment, such as servers, media systems and wireless access points.

Having a centralised platform to manage your network switching infrastructure is crucial. With numerous users accessing and transferring data across the network, a central management console enables efficient control and monitoring, ensuring the network performs securely and effectively. Your supplier or in-house support team should offer a central management tool that allows you to monitor network performance and receive alerts in case of any failures.

Security Management

Without proper security, network switching infrastructure could expose sensitive information, such as student records, to unauthorised access. You should request that your supplier or in-house support team configure switches to support network segmentation and robust security measures to protect this data.

In the next installment of our digital standards series, we will focus on server and storage requirements for schools, examining the necessary standards for performance, security and scalability.