Marietta Center for Advanced Academics: Grades 3-5

IDF

This “mini-IDF” connects to the Media Ctr IDF

MDF

The media ctr. IDF connects everything in the main building including all wireless access points (APs).

Server

ClientWorkstation

Media Center

Printer

Cat5

Patch Panel

Switch

Cat6

Cat6 cables

Fiber

Fiber to Central Office

Wireless AP

Melissa Wheeler

Marietta Center for Advanced Academics (MCAA)Network Project

IntroductionMCAA is a STEM-based magnet elementary school (grades 3-5) in the City of Marietta Schools System. The campus is divided into three buildings.

• The main building houses the administrative offices and front office, 3rd and 4th grade classrooms, clinic, cafeteria, media center, art and music rooms, and the gymnasium.

• The second building, referred to as the 5th grade wing, contains the assistant principal’s office, the computer lab and technology office, the gifted classrooms, and the fifth grade classrooms.

•The third building is the science wing. There is one lab for each grade-level, a storage room for equipment, and the custodian’s office.

•We are very lucky to have a dedicated full-time technology person on staff who handles all issues regarding the network and all computers. Every student has his or her own tablet for use while at school, while each teacher has a laptop. Because of the 260+ laptops, every room has a wireless access point (AP), including the cafeteria, gym, and media center, which has 2 access points.

Melissa Wheeler

Marietta Center for Advanced Academics (MCAA)Network Project

Each building has either an IDF or MDF. The IDF in the science building is located in the custodian’s office. The main building actually has one main IDF and one “mini-IDF”, as Mrs. Paul, our tech person, calls it. The “mini-IDF” actually is not an IDF, since it only contains a switch and does not directly connect to the MDF – she really thinks of it as an extension of the media center IDF. It is located in a closet in the gym: it is connected to the main IDF in the building which is located in the media center. The reason for the “mini-IDF” is that this portion of the building was a later addition to the main building, so it connects the gym, art, and music rooms to the rest of the building. The MDF is located in the 5th grade building in the computer lab.

The school operates on a client-server Ethernet network with a BUS topology. The network operating system is Microsoft Server 2003, revision 2. Fiber cables are used to connect the IDFs to the MDF. Cat6 cables are used to connect switches to one another when there are two in the same closet and to the two servers located in the Tech Room of the 5th grade wing. All classrooms are connected to their respective IDF or MDF patch panels by Cat5e cables which are run through the ceilings. At the ends of the Cat5e cables are RJ45n panduits. The switches used to be 100mbps and were recently upgraded to 10/100/gigabit switches.

Finally, the media center has 6 desktop computers hardwired to the IDF located in the media center. Five of these stations are for student use for Accelerated Reader, OPAC searches, and research use while the sixth is the computer used by the media staff for circulation. There is one networked color printer and one networked poster printer.

Melissa Wheeler