Any reccomendations for school broadband providers

[IT_Man_Dan]

Morning all,

We currently get our broadband through our LEA and for various reasons are strongly considering getting our own solution in.

I'm thinking a 100mb leased line should do the job. We have our own TMG on site that we can use for the filtering and have Sophos Antivirus.

Can anyone suggest a good provider?
Also are there any more considerations I need to make before pursuing this?

Thanks
Dan

[glennda]

M247 Top notch at my last place was pukka - @psillars

And yeah ditch WSGFL its awful best thing I did for my old school!

EDIT: If I remember the SLA correctly you have to give them at least 6 months notice if you want to cancel mid term - although it is only a year contract with them.

[Quackers]

We jumped from the LEA to Zen, we get ADSL backup for free if you have a PSTN line onsite to take it, and well its Zen, actual Tech people at the end of a phone and not script monkeys....

[glennda]

Your are right next to an exchange (well 0.5 miles away) which isn't that badly provided - see here.

You might even be able to get a decent EFM connection which will be a lot cheaper.

[twin--turbo]

PM Me your postcode.

Rob

[CPLTD]

If you're in the market for renewal pricing for Broadband provision (including leased lines, FTTC, SIP trunking etc) feel free to contact us.

We find our prices are far more competitive than BT, also with shorter contract terms (usually 3 years vs BT's 5 )

Couple that with Fortinet firewall solutions and the prospect suddenly becomes better than most BT/LEA renewal quotes.

Joe @ CPLTD

[glennda]

Couple that with Fortinet firewall solutions and the prospect suddenly becomes better than most BT/LEA renewal quotes.

Having worked with a few of these i wouldn't put them down as a selling point - they are possibly the most annoying Firewalls around!

Toby

[sonofsanta]

We went with Vaioni about 18 months ago and it's been just dandy - good pricing on them and never had any problems.

I may or may not have a smug smile on my face when I get circulars from county about problems with their RBC.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Well we are here @ SchoolsBroadband

Not sure what Glenda is on about ref Fortinet. They are brilliant firewalls. We've been using them for years.

[glennda]

Perhaps i've just been unlucky - they are ok when they work - configuring them is a nightmare when you compare to items such as Watchguards etc

[Soulfish]

Another recommendation for M247. Our new leased line with EFM backup has just gone live. Got it sorted in extra quick time and everyone I've dealt with has been great

We manage our own firewall however (Palo Alto PA-4020) with Smoothwall filtering (SWG-1200's - 3 of them atm ) for the best of both worlds.

[synaesthesia]

I'd like to chip in a recommendation for Schools Broadband based on the excellent service had by several schools in my area. Fortinet is easy to work with and the built in VPN gubbins are damn handy. ADSL backup costs an extra £nearlybuggerall because ADSL costs £nearlybuggerall anyway.

[SchoolsBroadband]

aww shucks you'll make me blush @synaesthesia

Thanks for the kind words

[glennda]

I think you must have been. We have nearly 1000 installed with very few issues. Sure they are not super easy to setup as you need to know what you are doing.

This is one of the reasons we sell them as tpart of a fully managed service so you can use us and our engineers are Fortinet qualified to configure all your security for you as were experts in that field.

Don't get me wrong Watchguard and others such as Smoothwall are good too but to imply Fortinets are unreliable isn't right or fair I think.

Branch office VPN seems completely unreliable with them (and its not the net link between I've tested that) perhaps it could just be the 15 or so I've worked with.

They are fairly straight forward to setup - but then i find that with most firewalls when you understand what you are doing.

[twin--turbo]

We use a mix of Draytek, MicroTik and Cisco depending on the application.

Rob