Hi all,
My Dad has just started a new job at a school with no internet connectivity apart from dialup in the school office for e-mails. As a DT teacher he is keen to get some kind of internet connection. The school is quite out in the wilds so I should imagine will only get slower broadband speeds.
Does anyone have any school friendly recommended broadband suppliers or bright ideas regarding fibre, satellite, etc?
Cheers
Jona
Dial Up!
Do you have cable in that area?
If you're out in the stick with no hope of even the slowest ADSL line, let alone any hope of cable running past, then you only have two options.
1) Check with the major mobile phone companies and see if any of them have a 3G signal that reaches that location. I think this may be faster than the second option (depending on location/signal strength/etc).
2) There is satellite broadband...
Welcome to our Homepage - BeyonDSL
This uses your Dial-Up line for the upstream and satellite for the downstream. Costs from £199 to install and £19.99 per month. Basic speed of 33kbps/512kbps. If you go to the extra expense of upgrading the Dial-Up to ISDN then you can get 64kbps/512kbps - or even 128kbps/512kbps.
Leased Line that will be an option, costly but still an option. Zen internet are good.
Thanks for the replies so far guys.
It is a possibility that it is close enough to an exchange to get some form of broadband but it will be touch and go, that option is first to be investigated I guess.
There's certainly no cable of the Virgin Media, etc type.
Apparently they have tried "mobile broadband" type modems from one of the providers but from what I can gather it was much more 2g speeds than 3g.
Cheers
Jona
One other option, though can be pricey and difficult to set up, is to bond 'a few' Dial-Up or ISDN lines. If ADSL is at all possible, however slow, it may prove to be the best solution.
Hi
I know this will sound a bit daft but you might want to have a look at a mirowave link to another establishment or a satalite broadband.
One of the schools that I used to work for used to use them.
I am sorry I dont remember who supplied it sorry.
Richard
Not a daft idea at all, the first school I worked in a few years bk had to go with a 6mb/s microwave link which was provided by the LEA, didnt really have any problems apart from when it really rained! lolOriginally Posted by ricki
that was when boardband wasnt in the area!
Sympathies; that was my school when I arrived. Fortunately we're in town, so Broadband was accessible. Problems caused by Bursar (now retired) who couldn't see why internet access was needed at all.
Your Dad is going to have to take care not to tread on toes with this. Get the SMT on board, or use a personal laptop with a mobile broadband link.
This school is an independent, so piggy-backing off another school is probably not an option. Satellite Broadband may be more available, although I wouldn't write off the chances of getting a land-line immediately. You need to check out directly with some ISPs or BT
JANET, the UK's education and research network | Janet
They do the education backbone in the UK. They provide uni's etc internet. They might do the school a connect.
Last edited by matt40k; 26th January 2009 at 03:30 PM.
First suggestion, EPS9 lines, try and get community/other schools involved (its a type of leased line), my old job had them run the line from the ISP to the school, then we provided the lines for other schools in the area (i.e. to the primary schools). You choose the line driver then, so you can manage the modem, our first one was 512Kb, but the connection was Ethernet (so ~10Mb).
Or broadband-over-satellite would be my second suggestion, or, and hit me if I'm confused, but BT used to do leased lines for schools, that were reasonable, at the time, BT could do a 1Mb for about a grand a year, and we were paying a grand (from the NGfL slush) for a 512Kb EPS9...
You could bridge several 512Kb lines of BB together, thats the other thing, if you have the funds and only 512Kb line speeds.
Not sure if this is still relevant, but if you're still looking at a broadband option, the best thing to do would be to pop your postcode into the checkers at Samknows Broadband - Comprehensive Broadband Information. That will give you a rough estimate of your line length and also what options are available to you at your exchange. As a rule of thumb, ADSL's optimum distance is anything under 3Km, whereas ADSL2+ is around the 5Km mark. Let us know how you get on
I am miles away from our local exchange. Anything over 512 gets a bit flakey so I have settled on 3x 512 connections, 2 different suppliers for redundency and then load balanced with a vigor 3300. Works very well indeed.
Ben
hmm can't think of any, but what is really the exact speed though?you need to get an up-to-date info about it because it surely help when you're planning an upgrade, to see your money's worth.right? go here, they have different internet speed tests.. academicbroadband(dot)com and you'll know the speed. hope this helps.
The thread is over 2 yeasrs old...hmm can't think of any, but what is really the exact speed though?you need to get an up-to-date info about it because it surely help when you're planning an upgrade, to see your money's worth.right? go here, they have different internet speed tests.. academicbroadband(dot)com and you'll know the speed. hope this helps.
But i am interested to know what you did in the end
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