How caching works

A web cache is a device that makes connections to websites on behalf of other computers. Each time an object (a page, image, video etc.) is downloaded, a copy is stored. Subsequent requests for the same file can be served without re-downloading. This saves bandwidth and decreases response times.

Media Library's massive impact

Childress Independent School District in Texas originally deployed CACHEBOX to deliver state testing, ensuring that tests load quickly, regardless of any other activity on the district internet connection. Since then, teachers discovered CACHEBOX's Media Library feature and its ability to provide students with online video without exposing them to inappropriate comments and links.

By providing controlled access to online video content, the district is able to block direct access to video platforms, allowing teachers to use powerful content in class without any buffering and with confidence that they're compliant with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA).

Childress Independent
School District, TX

3 Schools | 1,090 Students
Local | 1Gbps

The IT director at Childress, Ignacio Rodriguez, had the following to say about the Media Library, "My teachers have become very comfortable with the ease of use of our Media Library, they use it all the time."

Content from the Media Library is not the only content that is accessed buffer free – 89% of the school's overall content is served through the CACHEBOX, including 98% of Apple content – avoiding nearly 1TB of downloads.

Bigger bandwidth ≠ faster internet speeds

At Lytle Independent School District the students and staff should be enjoying superfast internet access in class with 5 times what the FCC's recommends, yet they still found it slowing down during peak times.

Closer inspection confirmed that congestion was not causing the slowdown and, even if it were, a higher capacity connection was not a feasible or financially sustainable solution. Having worked with caches before at Pearsall ISD, Richard Tollett knew exactly what solution he wanted.

Lytle Independent
School District, TX

5 Schools | 1,778 Students
Local | 10Gbps

With the help of E-Rate funding, Lytle purchased a CACHEBOX310, a dedicated caching solution to give the school the boost it needed and now content is delivered up to 300 times faster.

But not only is the school seeing major speed improvements, 95% of its overall bandwidth is also saved through caching.

CACHEBOX SAVES THE DAY

Kerrville Independent School District teachers wanted to use more online video content in the classroom. But its 500Mbps connection was not enough to support the 5,000 students on its network, and congestion was causing delays all day long.

Kerrville didn't have the budget for a bigger connection and the school needed to find a better way to manage capacity with its existing connection.

Kerrville Independent School District, TX

9 Schools | 4,818 Students
Town | 10Gbps

CACHEBOX was the cost-effective bandwidth boost Kerrville needed. With CACHEBOX Kerrville teachers have seen instant benefits. Traffic from Google Videos is now served 11 times faster. CACHEBOX also delivered an impressive 1.31 TB of Microsoft traffic.

Now, the majority of software update files are being served by CACHEBOX rather than the internet connection and are cleared from their network up to 9 times faster:

Microsoft traffic is not the only major bandwidth savings that Kerrville has been seeing. Some other highlights are:

With CACHEBOX in place to help it make the most of its bandwidth, Kerrville was able to put off any major upgrades for a further 4 years.

CACHEBOX delivers instantaneous results at Louise ISD

Louise Independent School District in Texas wanted to incorporate more video content into its e-learning scheme. And with more than the FCC's recommended 1Mbps available per student, there should not have been any issues – but the school's network was not able to keep up with the amount of repeat content requests. Congestion was causing delays all day long.

With the connection already struggling to keep up with regular classroom demand, teachers feared the worst for when it was time for online testing. The slow speeds were putting students' test performance at risk and the school district needed a solution that will not only support the classroom content, but proctor caching during exam season as well.

Louise Independent School District, TX

3 Schools | 473 Students
Rural | 500Mbps

During 2021's E-Rate season, Louise Independent School found CACHEBOX, a dedicated caching device that offered a solution to its problems.

Louise ISD deployed CACHEBOX in April 2022 and has seen instantaneous results, with an average of 71% of its bandwidth saved since deployment and over 780GB of data served directly from the CACHEBOX.

CACHEBOX delays expensive firewall upgrades

Pearsall Independent School District subscribes to a 10Gbps internet connection but, due to throughput limitations on network infrastructure kit, it is only able to use 2Gbps.

The district's internet connection offers great value at 9c per Mbps. But, as other districts are finding, upgrading internet capacity into the multiple gigabytes comes with hidden costs and limitations. To access the full capacity of its connection, Pearsall would need to upgrade its Firewall to one that is capable of handling 10Gbps.

Pearsall Independent
School District, TX

5 schools | 2,247 Students |
Town | 2Gbps/10Gbps

With this expensive Firewall upgrade factored into the internet cost, the value is significantly reduced. The impact in the classroom is even more pronounced: rather than delivering a healthy 4.4Mbps per student, students are getting less than 900Kbps – less than FCC's 2018 target.

Thankfully for Pearsall, students have lightning-fast access to content because the district had already deployed a CACHEBOX which is delivering over 90% of traffic from within the LAN.

And because Pearsall has deployed CACHEBOX between students and the underpowered kit, the amount of traffic that the equipment needs to handle has been reduced, delaying the need to upgrade it. What's more, CACHEBOX is accelerating traffic by over 7 times – the district is getting the equivalent of 14Gbps from just the 2Gbps that is available from its internet connection.

Unlike the falling cost of internet access, Firewall, Filter, Router and Switch prices are largely static. For many districts, gaining access to even more capacity is no longer the no-brainer it was. "The brute force 'throw more bandwidth at it' approach has never really fixed schools connectivity problems" says Chris Newman, ApplianSys K-12 consultant. "Once a district reaches 1Gbps, technology leaders need to factor the cost of infrastructure upgrades into any plans to increase bandwidth".

"Multigigabit access is no longer limited to urban locations. Rather than simply getting as much bandwidth as they can, technology leaders must consider which of their connectivity investment options will make the most difference. I've yet to find a district that would get better value from a connection upgrade than a cache."

How caching saves bandwidth

Some school districts are fortunate enough to have access to affordable bandwidth. For others, even with E-Rate funding, high capacity links are too expensive. And in some - typically rural - cases, high capacity links are simply not available.

By storing copies of web content the first time it is accessed and serving repeat requests locally, schools can make relatively small links go a long way.

A school district with lots of student devices - particularly one with a 1:1 scheme - will find that more than 50% of their bandwidth is consumed by software updates.

OS, anti-virus and application vendors regularly provide updates to improve performance, usability and security. These files are often enormous, swamping your network when simultaneously accessed by thousands of devices.

Districts that deal with this by deploying a cache effectively reach the FCC/SETDA target of 1Mbps per student with only 500Kbps per student connections.

To avoid using most of your capacity downloading software updates your 1:1 needs the 1:1,000 approach that only caching can give you: 1 download:1000s of devices!

How caching flattens peaks

The uniqueness of K-12 web traffic, with its large 'start-of-lesson' spikes in demand (for mainly duplicate requests) has significant consequences for bandwidth management.

These infrequent peaks are often used to define how much bandwidth capacity a school needs. However, since these same peaks are highly cachable, caching can significantly reduce the amount of capacity needed.

If a school purchases bandwidth to cover these spikes in demand - without deploying caching - the amount of unused capacity is dramatic (as represented by the red shaded area, below). Being unused MOST of the time, whether broadband is affordable or not, the excess capacity represents significant wastage of both school and E-Rate funds.

Caching enables 'burstable capacity' at low cost - so schools can easily handle periodic surges in demand (typically 6-7 times higher than sustained traffic) while only paying for average throughput. It offers real value to rural schools because it delivers accessibility at a fraction of the cost of fibre.

The reality for e-learning is that capacity is not the real goal - speed of classroom browsing is. Affordability remains an important and constant goal, and caching is key to this; there is no upside to excessive bandwidth.

How does caching makes content faster

Teacher tools like Lesson Management or Adaptive Learning Systems typically use embedded video to encourage independent learning, keep students engaged and clearly communicate complex ideas. When this content feels slow, these benefits can be lost.

Upgrading bandwidth lets you support more users, but the speed at which your users can access content depends on many other factors. From the physical sending of data to the ability of the content provider's web server to meet demand, many of the causes of slow content are outside of your control.

Caching content – storing and serving it locally - eliminates these delays and puts user experience back in your hands. In schools this can be the difference between keeping students engaged and losing their attention as they wait for content to load.