How are the rest of your schools connected?

[Dos_Box]

By now if you haven't twigged on there are quite a few of us from the North West. This is because I run a forum in Lancashire for all Lancashire schools' technical staff to have a massive whinge. Or at least thats what it feels like. It is a closed froum due to the nature of the information contained on it, but hihly successful non the less and allows me to pass on their views to those at comittee level.
We are quite lucky in Lancashire in that we own our own network infrastructure which allows us to put in internet feeds of up to 100Mbps to most of our secondary schools, this also creates a problem in that we struggle to allow schools VPN, tunneling and access to pupils files from the outside world, bu we are woring on it. For tis speed of connection they pay a minimal amount each year whilst receiving free web hosting, web mail and a Sophos subscription. Each school is run as a seperate entity and most employ a network manager and technicians and can run their affairs in whatever way they see fit.
I'm just curious as to how the rest of the UK's schools gets their internet connection? Are you tied in with people like RM or Viglen (spit, spit) and do you think that you could do better? Let us know here please.

[ChrisH]

Bah which greedy gits have a 100 mbps feed ?

[Dos_Box]

Any school with fibre connections. Telewest provides the service and links straight into the server farm at county hall.

[Ric_]

But have you swapped out the 10Mbit NIC from the gateway machine yet?

[ChrisH]

Oh well to many hills round here and a railway bridge seperating us from the main road. Oh and it's an NTL area

[Ric_]

Oh well to many hills round here and a railway bridge seperating us from the main road. Oh and it's an NTL area

I believe that NTL and Telewest work together to provide fibre feeds (type in the postcode to find out). As for the bridge, where there is a will...

[RobC]

Fujitsu managed service across the district. We've got a 34Mb pipe into the Server farm at the main school & then I think it's 2Mb lines into every other secondary school (but don't quote me on that). Most of our primaries are in the process of getting broadband & the rest are on ISDN.

The only pain is, we're still using 10Mb Cisco switches throughout the schools. :cry:

[Dos_Box]

The only pain is, we're still using 10Mb Cisco switches throughout the schools.

8O

Are you NT 4.0 still? You might as well be.

[russdev]

embc (spits)

useless county isp..

Russ

[Dos_Box]

Which county is that Russ?
*Could you add it to your sig please?

[Diello]

SEGfL through Unisys - can't quite remember what goes into the Maidstone farm, but we get 6mbit to each secondary - soon to go up to 10mbit. It's a pain as it means we can get no control externally, remote support, etc.

[Dos_Box]

How do you make your feeling known or are you cut off from the decision making process?

[RobC]

8O

Are you NT 4.0 still? You might as well be.

XP Pro clients & 2003 Server. Takes the kids a minute or so to log on with limited profile sizes, takes me over 5 minutes cos of the crap I end up with in my profile! (I just stay logged on all the time now.)

Although funnily enough, I have recently upgraded our 2nd network (Computing/Bus Studies, no I'net connection) from NT4 to 2k. Logon times there are circa 3 seconds.

[Dos_Box]

You have roaming profiles?! Horrible, horrible, horrible.

[Diello]

How do you make your feeling known or are you cut off from the decision making process?

Well about every 2 or 3 months there is a generally a LEA meeting for something or other which allows you to grab one of the broadband team and hurrang them over something. Short of that, it's just constantly phoning them trying to get something done.