Inveneo Palestine Archives

Bringing High-Speed Broadband to Vocational Schools in Palestine

  1. Posted by Aaron Mason on May 3, 2013 in the categories: Education, News, Projects

A high-speed wireless antenna sits alongside a Palestinian flag in Salfit, Palestine. Photo: Bob Marsh
A high-speed wireless antenna sits alongside a Palestinian flag in Salfit, Palestine. Photo: Bob Marsh

In 2011 the students of Salfit Secondary Industrial School enjoyed what appeared to be a well-appointed computer lab. One of eleven schools in Palestine’s Technical Vocational Educational Training (TVET) program, the school’s desktop computers formed neat rows along the lab’s walls. Flat-screen monitors glowed with Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.

But looking closely and you’d have found very little movement on those pages. The internet, while technically available via the school’s DSL line, was incredibly slow. Loading simple pages would often take minutes when they would load at all.

Computer lab at the Salfit Secondary Industrial School, one of the TVET schools connected by Inveneo. Photo: Bob Marsh
Computer lab at the Salfit Secondary Industrial School, one of the TVET schools connected by Inveneo. Photo: Bob Marsh

In 2011 Inveneo was contacted by USAID, Cisco and the Palestinian Ministry of Education who were all looking for a solution to the bandwidth problem. These eleven schools were established to provide core vocational training – from auto repair to computer science to agriculture – to the next generation of Palestinian workers, an important part of the Ministry’s educational plans. Remote training, centralized data and advanced collaboration tools, all envisioned as part of the TVET system, had simply not been possible. With Inveneo’s expertise and funding provided by Craig Newmark’s CraigConnects organization, the decision was made to connect the schools in the TVET system with high-speed broadband.

Computer science students at Nablus Industrial Secondary School. Photo: Bob Marsh
Computer science students at Nablus Industrial Secondary School. Photo: Bob Marsh

The first step was to begin conducting site surveys at each of the schools, including an all-girls school and a school across the Israeli-Palestine wall.

“When I first visited the TVETs they all had DSL,” said Inveneo’s Bob Marsh, “but it was heavily congested to the point of being basically unusable. At least one was getting just 8kbps, which is just one-seventh of old-school dial-up. I met one principal who had to disconnect the entire school every time he needed to send just one email, and even then it would take fifteen minutes to go out.”

Antiquated infrastructure and extreme network congestion are common across Palestine, where unreliable service and massively shared connections are more rule than exception. What the TVETs needed was a new network from the ground up.

In 2012 Marsh returned to Palestine to evaluate vendors and proposals. A number of different network designs and implementation partners were considered and ultimately a set of high-bandwidth wireless connections were designed to connect the TVETs to one another directly via VPN, bypassing any existing infrastructure. This design would guarantee high-speed connectivity between the schools allowing direct communication and the sharing of a single high-speed internet connection. Once the network was designed a sustainable service and maintenance plan was developed.

CoolNet was selected as the local implementation partner based on their bid as well as their track record implementing the previously successful Model Schools Network, another Inveneo-guided project connecting 57 schools all over Palestine’s West Bank. A final contract was agreed on covering equipment, installation, internet service and inter-school connectivity for three years.

An IT teacher inspects an antenna on top of the Hebron Industrial Secondary School in Hebron, Palestine. Photo: Robert Marsh
An IT teacher inspects an antenna on top of the Hebron Industrial Secondary School in Hebron, Palestine. Photo: Robert Marsh

In early 2013 the project install was completed and Marsh returned to Palestine to perform a comprehensive performance test and site inspection of the system. Visiting each of the TVET sites, Marsh visually inspected every element of the system, checking that wires were nailed down, networking cable was set in conduit and visiting the rooftops to physically tug on equipment.

After completing physical inspections at each site Marsh tested the network performance using several independent tools. The websites Speedtest.net and pingtest.net along with the open-source bandwidth measurement tool Jperf were used.

The result? Connection speeds of 10Mbps were confirmed at each of the schools, and a 30Mbps connection was confirmed between the network core and the internet at large. The network was 100% operational and Internet speeds at each of the schools were now registering at over 1,000 times faster than in 2011. Broadband had arrived.

Virtual network diagram showing the TVET locations.
Virtual network diagram showing the TVET locations.

The full inspection took a total of just four days. The remote nature of several of the locations in Palestine made travel logistics a challenge, but the high quality of the installation, adherence to contract specifications and the stellar network performance made verification easy for Marsh.

“The most amazing thing about this trip is that nothing unexpected happened,” said Marsh, “This project was a smooth operation from start to finish with no surprises. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

Marsh with the principal of the Salfit Secondary Industrial School.
Marsh with the principal of the Salfit Secondary Industrial School.

The success of the TVET project validates Inveneo’s position that design, local knowledge and the right partners are just as important as technology in broadband deployments. The combination of technical expertise and local partnerships allowed Inveneo’s role to be one of evaluation and oversight, keeping expenses low and local.

“The TVET project is a great example of Inveneo’s design abilities,” said Kristin Peterson, Inveneo’s CEO. “This would have normally been an incredibly expensive project, but we came in with deep networking experience, a unbiased approach researching all options and a focus on meeting the needs of the TVETs. Our experience and local partnerships made this possible, affordable and sustainable.”

Unfortunately Marsh’s last trip coincided with the beginning of a large-scale Palestinian teacher strike, and as of writing the schools have not returned to a full schedule. Once the strike is settled and students arrive, however, the Internet, powerful educational tools and the whole world will finally be at their fingertips.

The campus of Nablus Industrial Secondary School, waiting for students to return. Photo: Bob Marsh
The campus of Nablus Industrial Secondary School, waiting for students to return. Photo: Bob Marsh

Congratulations to Al Bireh Youth Foundation

  1. Posted by Inveneo on November 11, 2011 in the categories: Education, News, Projects

Congratulations to Al Bireh Youth Foundation – one of 30 youth centers now connected with high-speed broadband! The club members can now get access to the internet, hold multi-club video and voice conferences, upload HD videos or other content to their shared central server, or create their own web content in Arabic or English.

Inveneo is excited to announce that the Al Bireh Youth Foundation’s Development Resouce Center (YDRC) is now part of the the YDRC Virtual Private Network (VPN), a modern, high bandwidth virtual private network deployed to 30 youth clubs in the West Bank through a project implemented by RUWWAD, Inveneo, and BCI.

Ruwwad is a Palestinian Youth Empowerment program led by the Education Development Center, Inc (EDC) and funded by USAID. Inveneo worked with RUWWAD to design the network based on the Youth Club’s needs. BCI is the Palestinian networking firm selected to build and operate the network and to train the YDRC’s IT staff to manage the network themselves.

This project is the first of a series of projects where Inveneo is working to deliver high speed broadband to youth centers and schools across the West Bank. Our involvement in this effort began over two years ago when Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility team invited Inveneo to assess how best to deliver faster and more cost-effective broadband to under-served areas in the West Bank. Cisco is continuing support for Inveneo’s work across the West Bank.

Pictured above is Omar Dahman, one of the IT administrators of the RUWWAD VPN: the high band-width private network that will soon link together all the youth clubs in the West Bank together. Omar is plugging in the short patch cable that brings the 30+ computers online at the Ramallah Al Bireh Youth Development Resource Center (YDRC) with at what is, for them, blazingly fast speed.

The eyes of the watching staff and club members went wide when an Internet speed test measured actual speeds much faster than the 10 Mbps dedicated, symmetric connection the clubs will ultimately share. This high speed access is now available among all the clubs and can also be accessed wirelessly throughout the YDRC in the media labs, business incubators, training rooms, and “robot room” equipped with tools like LEGO® Mindstorms robotics kits.

Omar and all of our teams are excited to connect West Bank youth at a very important time for the Middle East.

Connecting Technical and Vocational Educational Training (TVET) Centers, Palestinian West Bank

  1. Posted by Inveneo on May 31, 2011 in the categories: Education, News

CraigConnects and Inveneo teamed up to bring true broadband network connectivity to schools across the Palestinian West Bank. The Palestinian educational system has two tracks for grades 11 and 12: academic and vocational. The vocational, under the Ministry of Higher Education, manages Technical, Vocational, Educational and Training secondary schools (TVETs) in every region of the Palestinian territory. Inveneo selected the 12 TVETs located in the West Bank and surveyed the locations’ existing connectivity and physical site limitations, as well as each school’s individual needs. The survey revealed that the physical size of the facilities, curricula and number of students and faculty varies significantly from site to site, but all schools share a strong need for inter-campus collaboration and reliable broadband Internet access. In fact, virtually all the schools’ existing Internet connections were almost useless most of the time. All locations needed improved connectivity and the ability to communicate better with other similar schools.