Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Washington State's K-20 Education Network Upgrades WAN

The K-20 Education Network, a publicly supported network supporting educational institutions throughout the state of Washington, is upgrading its wide area network (WAN) infrastructure to provide high speed communications to 101 higher education institutions, K-12 school districts and libraries.

The goal of the network upgrade was to ensure that K-20 could support the hundreds of data-intensive applications used by its member organizations for school administration, distance learning and operations. "As the largest education network in the state of Washington, we need to be able to connect thousands of students, multiple schools and several organizations together," said Mike Scroggins, deputy executive director of information technology for the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges and chair of the K-20 Network Consortium, in a prepared statement.

The WAN upgrade uses a fiber diverse, hub-and-spoke Ethernet virtual private line (EVPL) from Comcast Business. K-20's 101 member organizations are spoke locations that use Comcast Business's high availability Ethernet solutions platform to connect to K-20's hub at its main data center. K-20's network hub in Seattle uses two 100 gigabit (Gb) fiber circuits to supply the network with more than 200 Gb per second of data throughput. High bandwidth, dedicated connectivity for colleges and school districts ranges from 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 10 Gbps per circuit.

According to information from Comcast Business, the solution provides K-20 with a high-availability, high-performance network that will let the organization "grow quickly and seamlessly as future network demands increase."

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.

  • circuit patterns

    Anthropic Launches Lower-Cost Claude Sonnet 5

    Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 5, positioning the model as its most autonomous mid-tier offering to date and a lower-cost alternative to its flagship Opus 4.8 system. The company said the model can plan multi-step tasks, operate tools such as browsers and terminals, and complete agentic work at a level that previously required larger and more expensive models.

  • Human Hand Assembling Digital Data Blocks

    Report: AI Impact Starts with Strong Data Foundation

    High-impact AI implementations are more likely to treat data architecture, governance, and operationalization as strategic requirements, according to TDWI's 2026 Blueprint report.

  • Abstract background with digital shield made of data particles glowing blue blocking against cyber attacks

    Report: AI Attacks Push Organizations Toward Autonomous Cybersecurity Defense

    Artificial intelligence is raising the stakes of cyber conflict as attackers use the technology to accelerate reconnaissance, uncover vulnerabilities, and launch attacks faster than many security teams can respond.