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District upgrades internet redundancy after fiber cut; telephony outages tied to legacy circuits
Summary
Technology staff described recent internet service disruption from a cut fiber and said they have added a secondary internet path and are procuring a failover for phone service after rain-related outages tied to legacy AT&T circuits.
Robla’s technology chief told the board that the district had modernized roughly 80% of its network infrastructure over the last two to three years but experienced a disruptive internet outage when construction outside Rio Linda High School severed underground fiber. The district added a secondary carrier connection to Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) routing — via AT&T as the secondary carrier — to provide automatic failover and reported no significant internet interruptions since the change.
Chief Technology Officer Elliot Lopez outlined the district’s recent infrastructure work: replacing two-thirds of network switches, upgrading wireless access points (including outdoor Wi‑Fi), deploying battery backups, and rolling out 169 security cameras. He said the district had increased its external bandwidth by a factor of 10 in the last two years to accommodate cloud apps and instructional platforms.
Lopez also described recurring telephone outages during heavy rain. He said initial AT&T repair work after the first outage was effectively a temporary fix and that the root cause — water intrusion in aerial cable bundles and junction boxes — was not addressed. “They did not fix the root cause of the problem initially, but rather applied essentially a Band Aid solution,” Lopez said. He explained that the telephone circuits are a legacy product supplied under an old state contract and that carriers are deprioritizing active maintenance on these circuits as customers migrate off the technology.
To fix telephony reliability the district is procuring a secondary, diverse circuit and planning migration options (including voice over IP) so that telephone service has automatic failover similar to internet connectivity. Lopez said procurement was underway and expected a spring migration to implement full redundancy. Board members asked for vendor specifics and made clear a preference for not relying solely on AT&T; Lopez said the district is evaluating multiple vendors though site limitations in the area constrain options.
Ending
District technology staff will complete the secondary-circuit procurement, implement failover for telephony, and continue phased replacement of legacy network switches and wireless infrastructure. Staff emphasized redundancy to reduce future instructional or safety impacts from service outages.
