Contacts:

Avenida dos Moinhos nº 12 B 2610-119 Alfragide Quinta Grande Portugal
351 211 459 950
[email protected]
Weekdays: 09:30 to 18:30 Sunday: Closed

DataRoad · IT Services and Consultancy

IT for Schools and Universities

Uninterrupted lessons

Networks, Wi-Fi and IT support for education

Wi-Fi for hundreds of students at the same time, separate networks for pupils and teachers, work during the holidays and support during school hours.

Campus and Classroom Wi-Fi

One access point per room where necessary
Separate networks for students, teaching staff and management
Building work during the holidays, support during term time

Educational IT Support

Helpdesk for administration, teaching staff and library
Always-available school management platforms
Cybersecurity and backups

High density

One access point per room where necessary, per-user limits.

Three populations, three networks

Students, teaching staff and administration separated, with distinct access rules.

Academic calendar

Building work in July and August, operation and support throughout the year.

Computing for schools, colleges and universities

In a school, the network has two weeks a year to fail without consequences — and it's never the weeks it fails. Lectures with projection, online assessments, school management platforms, administration office, library, Wi-Fi for hundreds of students at the same time: an educational institution's IT is a production infrastructure with peak hours every school day. DataRoad installs and supports networks, Wi-Fi, security and systems in schools, colleges and higher education institutions, with the rule of carrying out major interventions outside term time and having someone available when a class is about to start.

What is different in an educational institution

Hundreds of users logged on at the same time

An office of 30 people has 30 laptops and 30 mobile phones. A school of 600 pupils has, at 8:30 am, 600 mobile phones connecting to the Wi-Fi at the same time, plus the classroom laptops, interactive whiteboards and library tablets. The Wi-Fi has to be designed for density — access points in every room, centralised management, per-user limits — rather than coverage.

Three populations in the same network

Students, teaching staff and administration cannot share the same network. Segmentation — separate networks with different access rules — protects grading sheets, student data and accounting from whoever is experimenting with things in the next room. It is the first thing we design and the most frequently absent from the networks we inherit.

Minors' data

A school holds personal data of minors: identification, health, family situation, assessments. The GDPR treats them with heightened demands. Encrypted backups, defined retention, role-based access and an incident response plan cease to be good practices and become obligations.

Academic calendar

A rewiring or a server migration is not done in November. We plan heavy interventions for school holidays — summer, Christmas, Easter — and leave only operations and support for the term time. The school knows in September what is going to happen until July.

Decades-old buildings and separate pavilions

Lecture blocks, sports hall, canteen, library, reception — often separate buildings, linked by cables where nobody knows the routes. Fibre connections or wireless bridges between blocks and one rack per building, properly documented, are the foundation for the network to last the next decade.

What we provide to schools and universities

Structured cabling and certification of all rooms, with patch panels per block and fibre links between buildings. See wiring and networks.
High-density Wi-Fi with one access point per room where needed, separate networks for students, teaching staff, administration and visitors, and centralised management. See wireless networks for business.
Firewall and content filtering — access control, administrative network protection, age-appropriate filtering for students. See managed firewalls.
Servers, stations and platforms — secretary's office, library, computer labs, integration with the school management platform and Microsoft 365 Education or Google Workspace for Education.
IP video surveillance in the accesses and common areas, with retention and access in accordance with the rules applicable to spaces with minors. See CCTV for businesses.
Backups and business continuity — encrypted and tested copies of the school data, recovery plan for the start of the academic year. See managed backups e disaster recovery.
24x7 monitoring and support during school hours - through the contract IT Unlimited, with proactive monitoring and a quick response when class is starting. Support in Portuguese and English for international schools.

Real-life cases

Forward College – Lisbon (University of London) — the European higher education institution chose DataRoad for the complete installation of its campus computer network, structured cabling and Wi-Fi in Lisbon, featuring firewall and security, separate networks for students, teaching staff and administration, and dedicated Unlimited IT support, in both Portuguese and English. case summary Describe the challenge: dozens of students and teaching staff connected simultaneously, online classes and assessments, and zero tolerance for failures during the academic term.
National School of Public Health — complete installation of computer cabling on the Lisbon premises, for internal communications to meet the demands of teaching, research and academic management.

How we work with a school

When	What we do
Before the end of the academic year	Survey of the park and the network, meeting with management, proposal with a schedule for the summer
Term time interruption	Cabling, racks, Wi-Fi, servers and migrations — the heavy lifting, with no classes running
Week before kick-off	Wi-Fi load testing, checking all rooms, accounts for new students and staff created
Term time	24/7 monitoring, remote and onsite support, out-of-hours updates, monthly management report
Christmas and Easter	Windows for medium interventions: replacements, expansions, safety review

What is put in writing

The annual schedule of interventions, aligned with the school term breaks, agreed with the management before the start of the year.
Network segmentation: which networks exist, who accesses each one and with what rules.
The as-built documentationstructured cabling plan, racks, point certification and inventory — handed over to the school.
The backupswhat is copied, how frequently, for how long, and the result of the last restore test.
The response time during school hours and what counts as a critical incident (a room without a network during an assessment is critical; a library printer is not).

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you work with public schools or only private ones?

With both. For state schools and clusters, we respond to enquiries and public tenders — we have experience in public procurement with local authorities and public institutions. For private and international schools, we work on a direct contract basis.

Can you do the building work during the summer holidays?

Yes, and that is what we recommend. The survey and proposal are carried out by June; the intervention takes place in July and August; the last week of August is for testing and creating the accounts for new students and teaching staff.

Can the Wi-Fi handle 500 students at the same time?

Hold on, it is designed for that. We do a coverage and density study before installing, we place access points per room where occupancy requires it, and we set per-user limits so that a class watching a video doesn't block the assessment of the class next door.

Can you integrate with our school management platform?

Yes, we secure the network, servers, accounts, and security upon which the platform runs, and we coordinate with the platform provider on integrations—user accounts, single sign-on, and database backups.

Can the students access the administration data?

No, if the network is segmented — and that's the first thing we do. Students, teaching staff, administration and visitors are on separate networks, with distinct access rules and logs of who accesses what.

Do you only do the installation or also support throughout the year?

Both, but always under a contract basis. Installation is carried out for schools with a support contract or as a first step towards one; support during the academic year is provided through IT Unlimited, with 24x7 monitoring and a rapid response during school hours.

Schools and universities are one of the sectors in which DataRoad has specialised, next to hospitality, clinics, offices and multinationals, public sector e embassies and international organisations.

Where we operate

Nationwide, with our own on-site team and a physical presence primarily in Greater Lisbon. We have dedicated pages for Lisbon, Cascais, Oeiras, Sintra, Leiria, Coimbra e Porto. See all areas of expertise.

Contact us

If your school wants to be ready for September, the first visit is free and without obligation — and it makes sense to book it before the end of the academic year. Call 211 459 950 (weekdays, 09:30–13:00 and 14:00–18:30) or write to [email protected].