Webb School of Knoxville, a Pre-K–12 college preparatory school in Tennessee, serves over 1,000 students across 12 buildings on a sprawling 100-acre campus. For more than 30 years, Director of Technology Jim Manikas has been the steady hand guiding the school’s technology infrastructure. Together with Assistant Director of Technology Aaron Teffeteller, Jim manages a complex network that supports the diverse needs of students, faculty, and staff.
Like many schools their size, Webb faces the dual challenge of delivering reliable, cutting-edge technology on a limited budget. “Cisco and Meraki solutions are known for their high costs and management complexity,” Jim notes. This reality set the stage when it became time to update and overhaul their aging network infrastructure.
School networks bring unique challenges
Webb has three divisions: lower, middle, and upper. Each division has unique requirements and expectations for technology. One day, it’s a printer in the middle school; the next, it’s a VLAN on the fritz in the lower school; and then it’s a fleet of iPads that won’t connect to the internet in the upper school. “My job is basically to be there for everybody all the time,” says Aaron. “If our students or staff are having problems with hardware or software, I’m there to support them.”
When Jim started pricing out the hardware they needed to replace, he quickly hit the $250,000 mark, and that was just for the minimum viable access points required. The remaining infrastructure would also need to be upgraded to support these new APs.
Jim’s main question at this point was how they would pay for all that new hardware, not to mention the support contracts and subscription fees for the monitoring software. However, Aaron and Jim have one more complication—Jim is retiring this year, so they also had to consider how to leave Aaron with the support he would need going forward.
Meter: affordable internet infrastructure for schools
That’s where Meter came in.
“We were collecting quotes for the installation,” Aaron remembers. “We had around 200 access points and all the associated routers and switches, so the installation was adding up. Then Jim told me about Meter’s monthly subscription model, including their buyback program, and I was sold.”
Meter’s buyback program—subscription credit on your existing legacy hardware, which is then recycled—brought the total cost down even more, making Meter’s offering even more valuable. With Meter’s fully integrated solution, subscription pricing model, and personalized support, Jim and Aaron can focus on supporting their students, not tracking down a VLAN glitch.
“Our Meter installation was exemplary,” Jim tells us, “At a school, we have hard deadlines. We can’t be interrupting classes to install APs or anything. It was amazing that even with that, everything was finished in a matter of weeks, not the months I was expecting.”
“We went from watching the old hardware being pulled out to having fully functioning internet infrastructure in two weeks.” Jim Manikas Director of Technology, Webb School of Knoxville
One pleasant surprise for Jim and Aaron was that Meter went above and beyond simply replacing the hardware they had previously. “I expected going into this that Meter would come in, look at what we had, and say, ‘Oh, you have an AP here, we’ll just swap that for ours.’” Jim remembers thinking. “What I got was Meter engineers coming out, doing a full site survey, and going through each building with fresh eyes. We ended up with 30% more APs than we had before because Meter completely redesigned our network.”
The Meter Dashboard: self-serve visibility and control
Jim and Aaron love the combination of an intuitive dashboard and Meter’s on-call team of network experts, but they love not needing them even more. “Everything just connected up and worked on day one.” Says Aaron. “We use a Mobile Device Manager [MDM] for a fleet of iPads. We could simply tell it, ‘Here’s the new network,’ it connected up and worked seamlessly with the Meter hardware and software. Regarding our MDM and devices, you’d never know we replaced all the supporting infrastructure.”
“The Meter Dashboard is amazing. Forget everything else, the dashboard alone is worth the price of admission.” Aaron Teffeteller Assistant Director of Technology, Webb School of Knoxville
“Meter support is also incredible,” Aaron continues, but for most daily tasks, Aaron finds the Meter Dashboard serves his requirements and eliminates the need to contact support in the first place. “The user interface is so intuitive; I can get in, find what I need, make a change, and get out and back to work in no time.”
Webb recently hosted a weekend basketball tournament, something that would have been difficult to do with their old network setup that experienced buffering issues, overloaded routers, and patchy service between APs in their sports facilities. Aaron said about the event: “We had more than 20 games on campus between our two facilities. Each game was streamed via wired and wireless connections, and the event went off without a hitch. We could never have done this before Meter redesigned our network. And being able to set up a new temporary SSID for attending media was also a huge help”
With Meter in place, Jim can retire in peace knowing that Webb School is in safe hands with Aaron and Meter. “It’s a load off my mind, too,” Aaron wraps up our conversation, “I can focus on other things that I need to be worrying about, knowing Meter has my back where internet infrastructure is concerned.”
“I would absolutely recommend Meter to any school. Whatever complications your network situation might throw up, Meter’s team is up to the challenge. They were on top of everything from day one, and still are now that we’re back in session. Two enthusiastic thumbs up!” Aaron Teffeteller Assistant Director of Technology, Webb School of Knoxville