Customer Success Story
AI-driven network troubleshooting earns top marks at Dalton Public Schools
Dalton, Georgia, long known as the carpet capital of the world, has rebranded itself Soccer Town U.S.A. Immigration and soccer have transformed this city in the Appalachian foothills, which still produces most of the industrial carpeting in the U.S. The children of this largely Hispanic community have access to the latest educational technologies at Dalton Public Schools to help them succeed.
Dalton Public Schools’ commitment to excellence that extends to IT. An AI-driven network from Juniper enables a lean IT team to reliably meet the digital expectations of 9000 students, teachers, and staff.
11,000
Devices used by 9000 students, teachers, and staff connect to fast, reliable Wi-Fi
35%
Reduction in time spent troubleshooting the network
AIOps
Speeds troubleshooting to deliver a better user experience
AI-driven
Network streamlines IT operations and lowers costs
Reliable connectivity is a prerequisite to learning
Dalton Public Schools was an early adopter of 1:1 learning, long before the pandemic pivot, and when students and teachers returned to the classroom in 2021, digital expectations were higher than ever.
“Teachers had fully integrated technology into learning,” says Stuart Davis, director of IT at Dalton Public Schools. “Our network needs to be available and reliable, both inside and outside the classroom.”
Fortunately, Dalton Public Schools had done its homework. Before the start of the pandemic, the IT team had investigated cloud-managed wireless, including Juniper’s solution, for its next refresh.
Marvis earns extra credit
“When we saw Marvis and Mist AI, we knew that Juniper would give us the efficiency we needed,” says Davis.
An AI-driven network from Juniper delivers a hat trick of better user experience, streamlined IT operations, and lower costs. Juniper wireless access points deliver fast, reliable connectivity to students and teachers at Dalton’s 10 schools. The district uses the Juniper QFX5120 Switch for its data center top-of-rack, EX4600 for the campus core, EX4300 for distribution, EX3400 for access switching.
“We wanted to have a symbiotic relationship between the wired and wireless network,” says Jorge Miranda, network administrator at Dalton Public Schools. “As the only network admin, I wear a lot of hats and need to be as effective as possible.”
Juniper cloud services, including Juniper Mist Wi-Fi Assurance, Juniper Mist Wired Assurance, and Juniper Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, provide clear visibility into the user experience and can speed troubleshooting when issues arise. Miranda can pinpoint hard-to-identify problems not only with the network, but also with cabling, VLANs, or network services like DNS and DHCP.
For example, as Miranda was deploying the new Wi-Fi 6 access points at one school, the kiosks and some student laptops lost connectivity. Marvis quickly spotted the issue: the older devices didn’t support the newest wireless technology. “Without Marvis, I would have thought it was a configuration issue,” says Miranda. A device upgrade fixed the problem.
A quick study in the value of AI-driven operations
Miranda starts his day with a quick peek at Marvis to see if any actions are waiting.
“Being able to leverage Marvis for network troubleshooting is an absolute timesaver,” says Miranda. “Marvis takes us to a higher echelon for network management.”
Working nights and weekends to make network changes are a thing of the past, improving Miranda’s quality of life. “With Mist AI, I can make a change, and within 30 seconds, it’s running as it should be,” he says.
“We are commited to a top-notch experience for our students, teachers, and staff,” adds Davis. “With Juniper, everything works as expected.”
The Products
AP41
The Juniper AP41 series are high-performance 802.11ac Wave 2 access points with integrated patented virtual Bluetooth® LE and Internet of Things (IoT).
AP43
The Juniper AP43 high-performance Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) access point integrates patented virtual Bluetooth® LE (vBLE) and Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to deliver an unprecedented user experiences.
AP45
The Juniper AP45 brings the performance and patented virtual Bluetooth® LE (vBLE) technology of the Juniper AP43 to the 6GHz band for enterprises needing increased channel widths and capacity. Juniper AI solutions for Wi-Fi 6E optimize operator and user experiences with secure, near-real-time client-to-cloud automation, insight, and actions.
AP61
The Juniper AP61 series are outdoor access points that support 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi, patented Bluetooth® LE, and Internet of Things (IoT) integration.
AP63
The Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) AP63 access point offers high-performance Wi-Fi to ensure business continuity and operation efficiency in outdoor environments.
Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance
Driven by Mist AI and machine learning, the Juniper Mist Wireless Assurance cloud service automates troubleshooting and operations, making wireless networks predictable, reliable, and measurable while providing near-real-time visibility into user service levels.
Wired Assurance
The Juniper Mist Wired Assurance service brings Mist AI to access-layer switching. It sets a new network management standard with AI-native operations and automation, improving the experiences of devices connected to resources through Juniper EX Series Switches.
EX3400
The EX3400 line of Ethernet switches are a cost-effective solution for today’s most demanding converged data, voice, and video enterprise access networks.
EX4300
The EX4300 line of Ethernet switches are compact, fixed-configuration platforms that satisfy a variety of high-performance campus and data center access needs.
EX4600
The EX4600 Ethernet Switch offers a compact, highly scalable, high-performance 10GbE solution for enterprise campus distribution deployments as well as low-density data center top-of-rack environments.
QFX5120
The QFX5120 line offers 1/10/25/40/100GbE switches designed for data center, data center edge, data center interconnect and campus deployments with requirements for low-latency Layer 2/Layer 3 features and advanced EVPN-VXLAN capabilities.
Published July 2022