Nickerson South Hutchinson's commitment to maximising technology across its curriculum has seen every student equipped with a personal Chromebook or iPad. On top of that, the district started offering BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) mobile phone access.

1,200 students and several hundred staff using school-owned as well as personal devices on and off throughout the school day, amounted to more than 4,000 active IP connections. The increased demand was outgrowing the district's core network solutions.

The switch Nickerson used for DCHP couldn't handle the large volumes of IP lease requests, and the Windows AD server was struggling to handle the thousands of internet (DNS) requests. IT Director Aaron Bell was receiving complaints of connectivity glitches – in some cases students couldn't connect, others couldn't access websites.

Aaron needed to upgrade both DNS and DHCP solutions. But with a restrictive school budget, he needed to deliver high impact at best value. Luckily DNSBOX's ultra-secure, high performance integrated DNS/DHCP solution meant he could accommodate both services on a single server – making it very affordable.

For far less than he thought possible, Aaron was able to deploy a redundant pair of DNSBOX200s – one at each of the district's separate datacentres. The district can now provide the rock-solid, high availability network service it needs, with student access safeguarded should either server fail.

Whittier City School District wanted to better engage student and enhance the impact of its high-tech learning environment. All classrooms have wireless connections to the internet, an Apple TV and High Definition TVs and students at all grade levels have shared access to iPads.

With 2,300 network devices to keep connected, the district managed DHCP using a combination of Microsoft AD and MacOS servers for its subnets. But Director of Technology Manuel Plascencia was concerned: managing both simultaneously was tedious, risked errors, and offered limited overall network visibility.

He wanted an integrated solution and found DNSBOX DHCP to be ideal – and well within the district's budget. A quick demo of DNSBOX's user interface, intuitive management and helpful reporting features made for a quick decision.

Following a quick and easy migration of existing DHCP configuration, a redundant pair of DNSBOX200 DHCP servers now handle the core DHCP service – providing high availability district-wide.

Baxter Springs needed reliable, secure connectivity for more than 2,200 devices. Both school-managed and BYOD devices are used to access online learning content, so any downtime would negatively impact the classroom.

However, the district's existing Apple DNS and DHCP servers are no longer supported. With no more updates for DNS and DHCP from Apple, Baxter Springs Technology Director Ross Davies knew internet access would become insecure, slow, and at risk of failure.

Apple ceased support for DNS and DHCP in 2018, leaving many Apple-based school districts at risk, and in need of a low-cost, easy to implement, replacement solution. Like most schools, Baxter Springs feared commercial-grade solutions would be overcomplicated and wouldn't match education budgets.

Ross defined the district's needs as straightforward:

• For DNS: add local server addresses for secure LAN-side resolution of private IP addresses.
• For DHCP: assign static IP addresses based on MAC addresses, and dynamically assign BYOD addresses on the district's flat network, weekly.

Thankfully, Ross discovered DNSBOX. He instantly appreciated the easy-to-use interface, simplified administration, and advanced levels of security, and was excited to find he could deploy both DNS and DHCP on a single server.

Lakota Local School District in Ohio was operating its Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scheme on a separate guest network, which would handle around 15,000 student devices.

The district had previously been using a Microsoft-based solution to handle its DNS and DHCP services, but the number of devices on the network was growing, increasing the need for a more secure and robust solution – leaving the Windows server no longer fit for the job.

Network Infrastructure Manager Peter Mitchell decided to replace the servers with a redundant DHCP solution and quickly found ApplianSys' DNSBOX to be ideal, and well within the school's budget.

The district has now deployed two pairs of DNSBOX200 DHCP servers to handle its guest network, providing high availability and easy failover.

"I have worked with a Windows DNS server previously, and having used both DNSBOX and Windows, I prefer using your DNSBOXes. The interface is easy to use and very intuitive," says Peter Mitchell, Network Infrastructure Manager.

With plans to transition to a Chromebook environment, Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School District wanted to replace its Windows VMs to reduce its server management overhead.

But with over 10,000 devices connecting daily, IT Administrator Curtis Klopke knew that DHCP was one service he had to keep on-site and couldn't move to the cloud. He didn't want such an important service at the mercy of his internet connection or to incur additional latency, and he needed a robust and reliable solution to maintain uninterrupted access.

Curtis considered a few different options:

• The DHCP features on their existing switch or firewall were not suitable for a network of this size and it would lack the performance and control needed
• Deploying Windows hardware with DIY open-source DHCP software was another option – but this would ultimately add to his workload with frequent patching and maintenance
• He also looked at a full DDI solution, but with no real need for IPAM this would be overkill — and in fact unsuitable: too complex and costly for his requirements

After evaluating these options, Curtis decided on a dedicated DNS and DHCP solution instead. He deployed two DNSBOXes in the network core as a failover pair, to maintain high availability DHCP and Authoritative DNS services across the district's 5 schools and 2 offices.

Curtis was also very impressed with the DNSBOX's user interface — calling it intuitive, clean, and efficient. He particularly liked the automatic replication of DHCP changes. Because the DNSBOX200 failover pairs share configuration, instead of needing to manually configure each server, they never 'disagree' about the network. This feature will save him considerable time and reduce the potential for human error.

After migrating from Windows Active Directory (AD) to cloud-based Secure LDAP via G-Suite, Wesleyan Christian Academy were looking for a simple way to manage DNS and DHCP over 5 separate school sites. With roughly 1,500 devices running from two Windows servers, network administrators were concerned that the current solution was too cumbersome.

"Our applications and data were all moving to the cloud so the need to host and support AD along with a rack of servers was no longer needed. We found other methods for authentication, and all we needed was a reliable solution to provide DNS & DHCP. To date, ApplianSys products have been reliable and DNSBOX filled in the gap quite nicely," says Jonathan Ruble, IT Director.

After deploying two DNSBOX200s, Wesleyan's IT staff no longer have to keep AD servers up and running just for DNS/DHCP queries. By deploying two devices in Active-Passive mode, the academy enjoys dependable failover making its critical services even more reliable.

"DNSBOX has helped me simplify network management. In that, I did not have to keep Active Directory servers up and running just for DNS/DHCP queries. ApplianSys allowed me to remove the worry of managing 'over-featured' servers. It has been turn on and forget for the most part," explains Jonathan.