A decade of national-scale delivery.

National School Network Infrastructure (Managed Network)

The core national connectivity platform connecting every state school and kura in New Zealand to fast, safe, managed internet services — one of the country’s largest managed infrastructure programmes.

N4L's Managed Network is one of the country's largest managed infrastructure programmes, serving 2,470+ schools and 900,000+ daily users.

As a foundational member of N4L from 2013, led the technical design and evolution of this network across multiple generations — from initial broadband and content filtering deployment through to the third-generation platform incorporating next-generation firewall architecture, enhanced visibility, and improved security posture.

Scale 2,470+ schools · 900,000+ users · 176TB average daily consumption across the network

Te Mana Tūhono: National Wi-Fi Programme

Te Mana Tūhono ("the power of connection") is the Ministry of Education’s national ICT upgrade programme for all state schools. N4L was selected as the delivery and management partner.

The goal: give every student equitable access to fast, reliable Wi-Fi regardless of where they live or go to school. Led the architecture for the deployment and ongoing management of this programme.

This was one of the largest Wi-Fi deployments of its kind globally. Each school operates as its own self-governing network entity — the challenge was delivering consistency, security, and helpdesk visibility across 2,457 uniquely configured environments.

• 38,000 Wi-Fi 6 Access Points across 2,457 schools
• 12,000 multi-gigabit switches with 10G backbone
• SmartZone Controllers hosted across dual datacenters
• 850,000 Cloudpath licenses for network access and secure device enrolment
• Individual bespoke network design for each school, accounting for unique building layouts

Delivered Equitable access for all NZ state schools · Seamless classroom roaming · 1:1 device learning support · Centralised remote troubleshooting · Future-proofed for 5+ years

“Schools are self-governing entities. They are little cities. You’re taking 10, 50, or 100 households and sticking them all into one location with no real governance and no strict standards across it.”

Public reference: RUCKUS Networks case study; CommScope press release (2020); Ministry of Education programme

National Security Operations Centre (SOC) & SIEM

Designed the architectural framework and governance model for N4L's national Security Operations Centre — the centralised platform that monitors, detects, and responds to cyber threats across every school in the country.

The SOC platform is built on Elastic Security and Elastic Observability, running on Elastic Cloud Enterprise. It processes security event data from schools in real time, enabling N4L's security team to detect threats, respond faster, and proactively protect students and teachers.

Example response — 3CX cyberattack: when a cyberattack targeted the 3CX phone software used by many NZ schools, the SOC team used Elastic to identify every affected school and contact them immediately. What would previously have taken days took less than a few hours.

• Shielding students from 13 million security threats per month
• 10 million+ combined security and safety blocks daily
• Security response times reduced from days to hours
• 300,000+ events per second ingested and processed
• Multiple terabytes of data processed daily
• 91% customer satisfaction rating achieved
• 95% of schools comply with N4L’s safe and secure internet settings standard

“When you think about the number of users and attack surfaces across thousands of schools, Elastic is the glue that holds everything together.”

“Elastic is my Swiss army knife. It's a full stack that supports log aggregation, data analytics, and machine learning.”

Public reference: Elastic customer case study (elastic.co/customers/n4l)

Switch on Safety: COVID-19 Home Learning Security

When New Zealand entered COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, hundreds of thousands of students shifted to home learning — without the safety filters that protect them at school. N4L had two weeks to solve this before Term 2 began.

Designed a DNS filtering service by repurposing N4L's existing enterprise-grade Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise solution, working with the Akamai global team to adapt and deploy it for home use in time for the first day of Term 2.

The Switch on Safety filter was made freely available to all NZ students and teachers, filtering inappropriate content and blocking malware, phishing, and unsafe sites on any learning device — regardless of location.

• Deployed from concept to live in under two weeks
• Used by 30,000+ households
• 4.5 million unsafe websites blocked (mid-April to August 2020)
• 777,000 cyberthreats blocked in the same period

“It was a logistical challenge; it moved very fast. Everyone just had to chime in as fast as possible.”

“N4L is unique in the education sector in terms of the number of users we serve. Many security solutions don't scale to support our user base, but Akamai handles a mind-boggling volume of internet traffic daily.”

Public reference: Akamai customer story; CIO NZ feature (Dec 2020); N4L public programme

Identity & Access Management Modernisation

Led the strategic programme to modernise N4L's external identity and access infrastructure — migrating from legacy authentication systems to an enterprise-grade cloud identity platform.

This programme governs how 900,000+ students, teachers, and school staff authenticate to N4L services.

Work included: strategic roadmap development, vendor selection, programme governance, separation of technical migration from data remediation workstreams, and securing specialised engineering resources for complex custom attribute workflows.

Scale National-scale identity infrastructure · School and kura access · Customer portal integration · Phased migration approach

Network Access Control & Secure Access

Designed and scaled N4L's national network access control (NAC) infrastructure, delivering authenticated, policy-based device access across every school network.

The system manages 850,000+ device licences, enforcing secure onboarding and digital citizenship policies at the point of network entry.

Scaled the architecture into distributed, high-availability clusters to meet stringent network authentication availability requirements across thousands of simultaneous school environments.

Scale CommScope Cloudpath Enrollment System · 850,000 licences · Distributed controller architecture

Public reference: RUCKUS Networks MoE case study (Cloudpath Enrollment System)

National Email Security Programme

Led the architecture and deployment of a national inbound email protection service for New Zealand schools — protecting teachers, students, and school administrators from phishing, spam, business email compromise, and advanced email threats.

Deployed at national scale with visibility surfaced through N4L's customer portal, enabling school administrators to see their email security posture without requiring technical expertise.

Managed Network Evolution (NaaS / MN 2.0)

Led the multi-year architectural evolution of N4L's managed network — transitioning schools from legacy edge router demarcation into fully managed local network fabrics with improved visibility into internal school network topologies.

Authored optical LAN design blueprints for Ministry of Education review, ensuring cross-agency structural alignment. Expanded N4L's ability to remotely troubleshoot and support internal school network issues — reducing disruption to learning.

Customer Portal Platform (MyN4L)

Led the design and establishment of N4L's customer-facing portal and integrations platform, enabling schools to access visibility and self-service tools across N4L's services.

Features delivered: email protection visibility · guest access and device registration · online activity reporting · business intelligence dashboards · role-based access for school staff.

GovTech Lightning Lab 2018: Equitable Digital Access

Represented N4L in the inaugural Lightning Lab GovTech Accelerator — a 12-week Wellington-based accelerator run in partnership with Victoria Business School, WREDA, and Wellington City and Regional Councils.

Led the "Equitable Digital Access" team — one of 12 project teams in the cohort — developing models to connect underserved communities and close the digital divide for learners in Aotearoa. The project used community data, government datasets, and education pilot insights to connect communities with connectivity funding and resources.

Demo Day: November 2018, Embassy Theatre Wellington.

Public reference: Lightning Lab GovTech inaugural cohort; Idealog; OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation