Optimizing Network Performance Across 65 Schools with ElastiFlow

Overview

A local government organization responsible for 100 sites, including 65 schools, faced a critical challenge: persistent network slowdowns disrupted student learning. To effectively identify and resolve these performance bottlenecks, the organization turned to ElastiFlow. The solution quickly provided the Network Team with the deep visibility they needed, enabling them to pinpoint root causes and implement targeted, effective remediation strategies.

Challenge

The increasing integration of Chromebooks and iPads into student education made reliable network connections more critical than ever.

“Several years ago, we had laptops and iPads in schools, but the volume of those devices has significantly grown in recent years,” explained a Network Analyst.

The network was inundated with complaints like “The network was really slow yesterday.” The team knew they had to identify the underlying issues quickly to resolve them. “We had to pinpoint the issue because it wasn’t going to fix itself,” stated the
team lead.

“When 20 schools report the same problem on the same day, you know it’s only going to get worse.”

The lack of granular visibility into network traffic was a major hindrance, making it difficult to move beyond mere speculation to data-driven solutions.

Solution

Simply increasing broadband speeds was considered, but quickly dismissed. While it might offer a temporary fix, it would significantly increase costs for each school without addressing the core problem. The organization needed a solution that offered true insight. They chose ElastiFlow to gain the critical visibility necessary to diagnose the cause of network slowdowns in classrooms and design appropriate, long-term solutions.

According to the Network Team Lead, a major benefit of ElastiFlow was its ability to deliver the granular insights the team desperately needed. Their previous tools offered limited analysis and filtering options. In stark contrast, ElastiFlow’s powerful drill-down capabilities allowed the team to quickly investigate specific issues with remarkable detail.

Leveraging these capabilities, the Network Team identified a significant volume of Apple and Google traffic, directly linked to the primary student devices—iPads and Chromebooks.

This critical discovery enabled them to implement targeted solutions, including:

• Installing Apple caching servers at each site to reduce cross-site traffic for device updates.

• Adjusting Chromebook profile storage settings to optimize syncing processes and reduce bandwidth consumption.

“Before ElasticFlow, we could only guess where the problems originated, with no solid evidence,” the team lead explained. “ElastiFlow gave us the data we needed to pinpoint the issues, allowing us to start applying solutions.”

Key aspects of their implementation included:

• 

  User-friendly Interface:

  ElastiFlow’s intuitive design allowed individual school sites to quickly identify and isolate network issues, a crucial feature given the large number of locations the team monitored.

• 

  Detailed Traffic Analysis:

  The solution provided comprehensive analysis of traffic patterns and high-usage areas, offering clear insights into the exact nature and location of network performance problems.

• 

  Decentralized Troubleshooting:

  Support teams at each school were granted read-only administrative rights and trained to use ElastiFlow for initial local troubleshooting, empowering them to address common issues without escalating to the Central Network Team.

Results

Shortly after deploying ElastiFlow, the team rapidly identified two major issues causing classroom slowdowns. This quick detection allowed them to swiftly pivot from identifying the problem to implementing solutions.

• 

  Improved collaboration between teams.

  ElastiFlow’s user-friendly interface and shared access with role-based access control (RBAC) fostered better collaboration between the Central Network Team and the school support teams. On-site teams could conduct initial troubleshooting in ElastiFlow before escalating issues to the Network Team.

• 

  Significant Time and Cost Savings.

  The ability to quickly pinpoint and resolve network issues translated to substantial time and cost savings. What once took days or even weeks to diagnose could now be identified in minutes, reducing staff hours spent troubleshooting and minimizing related expenses. “Using ElastiFlow gives us hard evidence of the problem within minutes, and we can use that intelligence to ask, ‘Okay, what’s the potential solution? How do we move forward in resolving this issue?’” noted the Network Team Lead.

• 

  Increased User Satisfaction.

  Faster network issue resolution boosted user satisfaction and empowered on-site teams with greater visibility. According to the Team Lead, ElastiFlow's user-friendly display, which isolates traffic by site, was a significant improvement over overwhelming competitor solutions. The team also highlighted the exceptional support, noting that ElastiFlow's staff often implemented solutions on the same day they were contacted. With ElastiFlow, the organization can now proactively address network issues, optimize performance, and ensure a reliable learning environment for the future.