The Cate School is one of the top 10 independent college preparatory schools in the country with close to 300 boarding and day students representing 21 states and 14 foreign countries. Cate has 50 teaching faculty, 70 percent of whom have advanced degrees. The student faculty ratio is 6:1, and the average class size is 12.

Technology's Edge joined the Technology Committee at a time when there were several projects that needed to move forward. Each project involved a large number of possible options and approaches that could be taken to reach their long-term goals. Project included VPN access for staff and academic users, higher security between zones, faster network performance, better anti-virus & anti-spam technology as well as several smaller projects.

Technology's Edge evaluated a wide range of solutions that considered security requirements for a smart and capable group of high school students, the need to keep staff networks connected but isolated and the finite financial and support assets available for the projects.

The results were a new core firewall that took over routing and firewall duties high throughput levels. Two remote VPN portals were implemented and deployed on short notice with great success. All core switching was upgraded to a full Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) structure for better security and simplification of cabling plant design.

New mail front-end tools to control SPAM and Virus issues plus take over list-serv requirements were also deployed.

Implementation of Campus wide Network Access Control solution allowed the Cate School to reduce manpower burdens associated with the arrival of virus infected student PCs. Compliance with School policy for Virus software and patch levels is now automatically enforced. Further, Snort Intrusion Detection System was deployed for very low cost.

All have been added to further the school's goals of providing an excellent scholastic environment supported by appropriate technology, but managed by limited staff resources.