"ApplianSys is the only vendor that takes the time to look at our appliances for us, and it really goes a long way."
Mike Caruso, Orland Park Consolidated High School District 230, USA "We rolled out 1200 Chromebooks to classrooms and CACHEBOX means that we haven't needed to increase our bandwidth."
Rodney Leer, Brenham Independent School District, USA "Our bandwidth problems have been practically eliminated. Monitoring & customization is a snap with the web interface."
Desert Academy, Santa Fe, USA "Before CACHEBOX, engaging content like pbskids in-class learning games were "unplayable""
Dana Lehman, Highland Local Schools, USA "CACHEBOX enlightened me of the power of this technology in school networks."
Michael Miller, Network Consultant, Washington Township School District, USA

School’s In, DHCP Outages Out

September 05, 2025
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ApplianSys is pleased to announce that Burnt Hills–Ballston Lake Central School District (CSD) has deployed DNSBOX to deliver a reliable, on-site DHCP solution for 10,000+ devices, alongside authoritative DNS, supporting the district’s move towards a Chromebook-based environment.

As the district reduced reliance on Windows infrastructure, it wanted to eliminate the overhead of running and maintaining Windows VMs for core services such as DHCP and DNS. For Burnt Hills–Ballston Lake CSD, DHCP also had to remain on-site: cloud-based approaches can introduce latency, add external dependencies, and create avoidable failure risks. If the internet goes down, devices may be unable to obtain IP addresses, disrupting access across the network.

Curtis Klopke, the district’s IT Administrator, reviewed several options before choosing DNSBOX:

  • Switch/firewall-based DHCP couldn’t handle high lease volumes and lacked granular control.

  • Running DHCP on a Windows server with open-source tools still required constant security updates, manual maintenance, and regular reboots.

  • Enterprise DDI platforms added complexity and cost through features the district didn’t need, such as full-scale IPAM.

Curtis chose to deploy two DNSBOX appliances in the network core as a failover pair, providing high-availability DHCP and authoritative DNS across the district’s five schools and two offices.

Curtis also highlighted the operational simplicity of the solution, praising DNSBOX’s clean interface and automated DHCP replication, which reduces the risk of manual configuration errors. “It’s a no brainer for orgs that aren’t tied to Microsoft products,” he said. With the failover pair kept synchronised, the district has continuity of DHCP service without conflicting settings — and without the ongoing overhead of managing Windows VMs.

About Burnt Hills–Ballston Lake CSD

Burnt Hills–Ballston Lake Central School District (CSD) supports learning and operations across five schools and two offices, with a device estate of more than 10,000 endpoints. As part of a broader transition towards a Chromebook-based environment, the district sought to reduce reliance on Windows virtual machines while keeping critical network services dependable and locally available. With DHCP needing to remain on-site to avoid internet-dependent failure modes, the district prioritised resilience, administrative simplicity and consistent configuration across its network.