Google Chromebooks and GSuite

[cwade1001]

Hi,

 

We are looking at moving to Google Chromebooks for pupils and using Google Classroom and G-Suite. Has anyone had experience of a large deployment or Chromebooks and the impact on Broadband connectivity. We have recently upgraded our wireless and we are now using Unify UAP-AC-Pro and they seem to be performing great. We are also looking at moving some of the staff shared areas up to Google Team drives to allow access at home.

 

Thanks

 

Chris

[rogerdnixon]

Hi Chris,

 

We are 1:1 with Chromebooks - Staff and Students - so about 1200 devices. Pretty much everything is in Drive/Team Drives. We use Classroom and centrally provision and sync all Classes to SIMS (using GAM and scheduled SIMS reports). Aerohive rather than Unify - but I've heard good things about Unify. We have a 1Gbps Virgin Media leased line and use Securly for content filtering (on and offsite with parental control offsite). We don't often peak much above 300Mbps. Chromebooks and G Suite are pretty light on bandwidth if you are looking at Google Docs use. Obviously things shoot up is everyone is on YouTube. The only thing to watch is ChromeOS updates - once you are in the 100's of devices, I'd stagger updates over a few days. By default, they also do peer-to-peer updating - which if you have lots of devices can create a lot of network traffic - so I'd disable inter-station traffic (client isolation on - or whatever Unify call it). However, it is useful in places with limited bandwidth.

 

Happy to discuss in more detail if you want - we are a Google Reference School - os happy to help. I'll be on the Google Stand taking about ChromeOS on the Saturday of BETT.

 

Roger

[cwade1001]

Hi Roger, thanks for the info, that great to know. I guess when the devices are using gsuite there is minimal traffic as it's a similar to a remote session.

 

Chris

[rogerdnixon]

Sort if - but Google Docs/Sheets etc does the processing locally (which is how they can run offline) - so its less than a remote session. The recommendations for bandwidfth are https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/3339263?hl=en