The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts recently completed its connection to the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network (ARE-ON), allowing the campus to increase its internet bandwidth by ten-fold among other benefits.
ARE-ON is a not-for-profit consortium of all of Arkansas’ two- and four-year higher education institutions as well as several select organizations such as Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the National Center for Toxicological Research, Arkansas PBS and the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute. It provides a high-speed fiber optic network throughout the state to its members and other affiliates, including regional optical networks and commercial service providers.
Joining ARE-ON’s network provides ASMSA with access to a 10 gigabit Ethernet connection, a ten-fold increase from the previous 1 gigabit service the school had. A gigabit allows up to 1 billion bits of data per second to be downloaded by the user. Faster download speeds and larger bandwidth permissions allow students to access great amounts of information in a shorter period of time.
Upgrading the internet connection helps ASMSA provide the best learning and residential experience it can for its students.
“While having internet access for classroom and other learning experiences are important for every school, having the same reliable access for students outside the classroom is just as important for a residential campus such as ASMSA,” said ASMSA Director Corey Alderdice. “Students live their lives both online and offline, and ASMSA is their ‘home away from home’ for the better part of the year. We want to ensure students have access to email, streaming video and music services, gaming and other appropriate uses.”
Dependable, high-speed internet access critical for institutions of learning who want to be able to offer its students the best learning resources, including one-to-one education institutions where each student brings or is assigned a laptop for classroom use. ASMSA is a 1:1 BYOD (one-to-one, bring your own device) campus. Students who cannot afford a laptop of their own are provided one for the duration of their ASMSA experience at no cost.
“This upgrade will benefit our campus with faster, more dependable connectivity,” said Craig Erickson, information technology manager for ASMSA. “We also look forward to connecting and collaborating with other members.”
The campus has made great strides in increasing the bandwidth provided to campus over the past decade. In 2012, the campus bandwidth was 28 Mbps. Those speeds were too slow to allow video streaming or music streaming much less interactive gaming and social media sites. The school moved to the gigabit service in 2019.
Investments have also been made in specialized labs throughout campus for both academic and social purposes. The Arvest Digital Arts Lab serves as the main classroom for graphic arts and design courses as well as the journalism course, which focuses on the digital design of the yearbook.
One lab serves as the home court of sorts for the school’s esports team. The Arkansas Activities Association has officially recognized esports, allowing high schools to form teams to compete against each other. For as many students are members of the esports teams, there are likely many more playing games online from their rooms.
ARE-ON engineers and ASMSA Information Technology staff coordinated to execute the connection transition in December 2021 to allow students to return to campus with upgraded benefits that include access to top-tier cloud services and connections to individual peers in addition to the increased internet speed.
Elon Turner, executive director of ARE-ON, welcomed ASMSA’s addition to the network.
“ASMSA is a natural fit within the extended ARE-ON member community of higher education and healthcare institutions,” Turner said. “It was important to us, as peers within the University of Arkansas System, that the students, faculty and staff of ASMSA could benefit from the resources available through an ARE-ON connection.”