By STACEY PLAISANCE / L’Observateur / March 10, 1999

The East St. John High and Glade Elementary network-cablinginfrastructures will soon be upgraded due to difficulties with their current International Business Machines equipment.

The St. John the Baptist Parish School Board recently approved a $114,040technology upgrade that is expected to reduce infrastructure problems throughout the school system.

The current IBM infrastructure was installed in 1992 as a package deal complete with IBM computers, educational software and network infrastructure cabling.

But this IBM design, though state-of-the-art in the early 1990s, has since been abandoned and replaced with upgraded technology.

“IBM has basically abandoned this design due to the many continued problems that have resulted from this topology, with the main problem being the high degree of difficulty in troubleshooting problems that occur,” said Nathan Stein, executive manager of finance.

The topology approved by the board will handle network needs at both the administrative and classroom levels. Because the administration andclassroom networks will be unified, the school system needs the upgraded network topology which should be stable and simple to troubleshoot for any problems, Stein said.

The network is a full multi-media data delivery system that will be controlled with an active management system, he added.

“This system is used extensively throughout the country in both the business community as well as within the educational system,” Stein said. “This is a wise investment for the future of our school district’stechnology needs.”

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