Once you have decided on a particular upgrade, it’s time to file for E-rate funding and think about future network management.
In order to officially request E-rate funds for your chosen upgrade, you have to file a Form 471. Before doing so, make sure you understand the eligibility of your upgrade and that you have followed all the competitive bidding rules associated with RFPs and Form 470s. All requests for E-rate funding undergo a very detailed review process to ensure compliance with the rules of the program, so ensuring you have followed all rules before filing your Form 471 is a crucial step to obtaining E-rate funds.
After you receive E-rate funds for your upgrade, the final step is implementation! Read more about managing the installation and ongoing network maintenance to ensure your upgrade is successful in the years to come.
It is possible that as part of the upgrade you will be making changes to the network design. For example, maybe you move from a hub and spoke WAN to a ring network or switch to a new type of wireless controller architecture. If this is the case, be sure to think through traffic flows, routing or VLAN configuration updates, or additional hardware that might be needed.
Whether you procure a Category 1 service that requires special construction or a Category 2 upgrade with installation services, it is important to be heavily involved in the installation process. This ensures quality and timeliness of the installation and testing process. You may not need to be as heavily involved during the construction/installation phase, but it is still important to schedule standing meetings with them to check the progress to be aware of delays or issues.
For self-provisioned Category 1 projects, a district project management resource may be required to drive the upgrade. Even if the construction company has their own project manager, a school district counterpart project manager should ensure that the construction company has everything that they need and is adhering to all committed timelines.
Before you sign off on the project with your supplier, it’s wise to have a user acceptance testing process. If you receive a box by mail, and it arrives looking like it fell off the back of the truck, you wouldn’t sign for it. The same concept applies to your network infrastructure (or really any other service/product that you pay for.) Acceptance testing helps you to verify that you have been given a clean, working system with functionality as agreed at the start of the project. Acceptance testing before sign-off is therefore yet another important step you can take to ensure long-term success of your network upgrade. The criteria for testing should be based on the service level agreements in your contract. At a bare minimum, the following should be tested:
Finally, a successful network deployment depends on strong ongoing support and maintenance procedures. If your new network includes new features and/or hardware that you have not seen or used before, it’s a good idea for your internal IT team to become familiar with these. If your team is already equipped to support the new network, consider how your existing maintenance policies and procedures need to be updated. Additionally, maintaining updated network diagrams, consistent asset and inventory management, periodic auditing and testing of network equipment, and bandwidth monitoring will all help you better prepare for both future network upgrades and/or dealing with unforeseen outages and failures. Ultimately, these best practices will help you create a network that is easy to manage and maintain.
