CoSN Broadband Knowledge Center

Welcome to the CoSN Broadband Knowledge Center

This site is an effort to highlight the issues of broadband needs and high bandwidth capability in schools.  Not surprisingly, there have been many indications that districts are not prepared for the volume of traffic and sheer size of some of that traffic on their networks. Many are wrestling with this every day with a variety of sometimes blunt instruments (aggressive filters, policies, etc.) that may be limiting potentially good learning opportunities for students, such as videostreaming.

The survey done by The Greaves Group and The Hayes Connection, America's Digital Schools 2006, identified a "Bandwidth Crisis" after having several hundred CTOs calculate their likely bandwidth needs over the next five years. It turns out that most are unprepared by several orders of magnitude. Additionally, there have been a number of reports and comparisons done over the last couple of years that have looked at the issue across countries. Generally speaking the U.S. does not compare favorably with other first-tier countries - particularly given our belief about ourselves as technologically advanced.

We hope to set the stage in order to share both your knowledge and your questions with other CTOs across the country wrestling with these same issues. 

Permission to reuse this content with attribution is provided.