Leadership's Letter

Mazenod College’s Journey to a 10Gbps Internet Future

The internets birthdate is generally considered to be in the 1970’s and 1980’s, as the first time that a standard communications method was established and the Internet “Transmission Control Program” protocol was developed, however it really began in the 1950’s and 60’s as both a way for American government researchers to share information, while also spurred along by the Cold War, and the need to have a communications system setup which could still be used in the event of nuclear war.  As of July 2024, a total of 5.45 billion people around the world are using the internet, equivalent to 67.1 percent of the world’s total population.

Mazenod College uses the internet to enhance education by providing access to vast information and resources and facilitating better communication and real time collaboration among students, teachers, and parents. It supports online learning through MazCom, our LMS, and offers interactive and engaging tools like coding tools, STEM based technologies, educational games and virtual labs. Additionally, the internet broadens students’ creativity and innovation and adds flexibility to where and how they learn.

Over the years at Mazenod, our internet connectivity has grown from a small single internet connection, to in more recent years a 1Gbps (gigabits per second) uncontended (a dedicated internet connection that's not shared with any other organisation) fibre connection.  This has served the college well over COVID where we had to work and study from home and provide educational services to the college community over this internet connection.  As our needs continue to grow and our reliance on a more connected world of resources and systems, including cloud-based computing, the college has decided to increase our uncontended connection from 1Gbps to 10Gbps (ten times the internet speed or throughput), while also providing a second 2Gbps connection for better redundancy and ensuring less downtime for students and staff. This will also allow the college to leverage more cloud-based services and delivering innovative and state-of-the-art ICT solutions.

One of these cloud-based services we are currently implementing is Microsoft Intune device management.  Microsoft Intune helps schools manage and secure student and staff devices, ensuring a safe and productive learning environment with features like app management, device compliance policies, manage a college device from any internet connection (so a device can be managed while it’s at home) and remote wipe capabilities. This has been successfully rolled out for staff at the beginning of Term 3, and we will be rolling out the Year 7 and Year 10 2025 devices also managed by Intune.

Investing in our internet also allows us to further invest in up-to-date cloud-based software. Cloud-based software offers the benefits of easy access from any device with internet, automatic updates allowing the college to be more secure, and reduced need for local storage and maintenance compared to software that needs to be installed on a device.

We hope that this new internet connection continues to serve the college well, and that it continues to build on the modern education Mazenod College provides.

Ashley Voigt

Director of ICT