breaking away from la provided broadband, advice needed please.

[jjohnsoncantell]

Greetings,

We have decided to go alone with our own broadband due to the appaling service and cost of our local authority provision.

I have been asked by our new provider for some ip information and since ive never had to worry about this before, since its been dealt with by the la, i would like some advice please.

IP6 - our new provider has asked if we are wanting to use ip6 in addidition to ip4. Seeming as we have nothing as far as im aware that specifically requires ip6 i dont see the need unless anyone has any suggestions as to why it would be necessary..

NAT - as far as im aware the local authority nat our line. However seeming as we're breaking away is nat really necessary for our line since it can cause issues with lots of other network services.

We currently have our main functions hosted off site, email, vle, slg and i dont see them being bought back internally any time soon.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
James

[jmcdermott]

Greetings,

I am looking at doing the same thing, due to the extremely high cost of our leased line since changing to an academy.

My findings so far as follows:

IP6 should not be required due to the probable number of machines on your network.
NAT, you will require a static ip for each internal device that needs accessing from outside, which sounds like you have very little but wouldn't hurt to have five static ip addresses in your pocket in case you need them down the line. Without any need for access from outside your nat is very simple.

The issue I am on is web filtering, I have tested all the free versions and none come close to our current LA filtering, but it does appear that the LA filtering can be provided for none LA lines at a fairly low cost.

Hope this helps a little.

[RTFM]

We purchased Smoothwall firewall and filtering to go with out BT broadband for when we stepped out. The year 1 cost was the same as staying with the LEA but the year 2 and 3 cost was significantly cheaper.

[MYK-IT]

Breaking away from LA broadband provision could involve losing more than just the Internet.

Firewall
You have to have a firewall in place (either supplied by ISP - Additional cost?) or utilise your existing one (or buy/build one, e.g. SmoothWall).

Internet filtering
The LA probably supplied a (pre)filtered Internet connection that you could (or maybe not) amend remotely. This may have applied school wide or down to individual account level.
This would again be an additional cost for you; either the ISP can supply one (usually paid annually) or you can build/buy one from elsewhere (e.g. SmoothWall).

Email
The LA may have supplied the School's (inc Management) email accounts.
Even though they may be OWA based, you may find that they only work via the LA broadband connection!
You could always migrate to Google Apps, MS Live@Edu etc (free) for your email solution.

Intranet/Internal Services
Just double check what other staff access; as you may lose access to the LA's Intranet and Internal Services (HR, B2B, RedStor etc)

Then you will be a position to make a decision.

[jjohnsoncantell]

Thanks for all your replies guys..

@jcmcdermott - thats what i thought too regarding ip6.. With regards to filtering, we will be using a system provided by lseurope who are mainly an education focused company whos filtering is setup with that in mind. We've looked it over and its very granular what we can do with it.

@MYK-IT We have covered all those bases already thanks, but thanks anyways as its always good to get peoples advice incase we missed something.

Just for info, we have gone with a company called exponential-e who are providing a 100mb leased line for 9.2k pa. Plus they content peer with sites such as youtube so theres hardly any latency involved.

[jjohnsoncantell]

what are the advantages/disadvantages of using NAT?

[chazzy2501]

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