More and more, however, we are finding progressive districts installing fiber in the classroom to ensure appropriate access well into the future. These speeds make the delivery of video and voice possible over a network but currently only over fiber-optic cable. The speed and upgradability of the LAN is driven by both the cable selected and the network electronics connected to the cable. Current network installations typically specify a minimum of a 10mbps switch with a 100mbps uplink to the school backbone. The switch provides a full 10mbps of bandwidth to each individual port, where a hub shares the 10mbps with all of the computers connected to it.
Switches also tend to have expanded management capability for diagnosing problems.
Currently, wireless LAN's share bandwidth and are not switched. This typically provides the rationale for wired installations in addition to wireless ones in schools that are considering wireless technologies. The connection of schools to each other through a WAN provides the next layer of the network architecture that schools must consider. Traditionally, the WAN has been used for administrative district applications from a mini or mainframe computer that requires little bandwidth. With the exponential expansion of the Internet, the need for a robust WAN has quickly emerged.