Bonded ADSL - or alternatives?

[gsk]

Hi All,

 

I am looking into getting a quicker broadband connection for a rural school that is a long way from the exchange. They currently have a 2mb Learning Stream connection which is very obviously slow but symmetrical and guaranteed. They are outside the range for an EFM connection, a single adsl line will deliver 3mbps down and 0.4 up but isn't guaranteed and wholesale fibre is double the price of the LS connection and therefore unaffordable. I have seen to other potential ideas after looking around on the net. 1 is a satellite connection with someone like tooway but have written it off due to poor consumer reviews so imagine that its nowhere near reliable enough for a school. the other idea was bonded adsl. Eclipse do a 4-line solution which would deliver 10-12 Mbps is about £2k but I would like to - if possible go with someone who can do the whole managed router/firewall/filtering service too. Any ideas?

[KK20]

outside of bonding the only other I can think of is a wireless option if one exists near you. Edited April 26, 2013 by KK20

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi All,

 

I am looking into getting a quicker broadband connection for a rural school that is a long way from the exchange. They currently have a 2mb Learning Stream connection which is very obviously slow but symmetrical and guaranteed. They are outside the range for an EFM connection, a single adsl line will deliver 3mbps down and 0.4 up but isn't guaranteed and wholesale fibre is double the price of the LS connection and therefore unaffordable. I have seen to other potential ideas after looking around on the net. 1 is a satellite connection with someone like tooway but have written it off due to poor consumer reviews so imagine that its nowhere near reliable enough for a school. the other idea was bonded adsl. Eclipse do a 4-line solution which would deliver 10-12 Mbps is about £2k but I would like to - if possible go with someone who can do the whole managed router/firewall/filtering service too. Any ideas?

 

Hi GSK,

 

we do bonded DSL with content filteirng and security all in. I'll PM you.

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

err for some reason I can't PM you. Edugeek keeps on crashing!

 

Do send me a PM or give me a call if you like and I'd be happy to help.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Driftingashore]

The school you're talking about sounds a lot like us, except that our ADSL option is only 1Mbps. Our options were either a bonded solution, leased line, or ADSL and pray for FTTC to arrive at some point. The reality of the situation is that it simply isn't an ideal world, and

 

This isn't really helpful to you, but we were bailed out by Gigaclear committing to build a fibre to the property network in our village, and with any luck, come september / october we'll be looking at peak speeds of ~900Mbps up/down. Complete, total, absolute overkill, but who am I to complain!?

 

Schools Broadband were pretty awesome at answering every question I could think up, and were my preferred quote before Gigaclear gave an offer too good to refuse.

[soveryapt]

Hi All,

 

I am looking into getting a quicker broadband connection for a rural school that is a long way from the exchange. They currently have a 2mb Learning Stream connection which is very obviously slow but symmetrical and guaranteed. They are outside the range for an EFM connection, a single adsl line will deliver 3mbps down and 0.4 up but isn't guaranteed and wholesale fibre is double the price of the LS connection and therefore unaffordable. I have seen to other potential ideas after looking around on the net. 1 is a satellite connection with someone like tooway but have written it off due to poor consumer reviews so imagine that its nowhere near reliable enough for a school. the other idea was bonded adsl. Eclipse do a 4-line solution which would deliver 10-12 Mbps is about £2k but I would like to - if possible go with someone who can do the whole managed router/firewall/filtering service too. Any ideas?

 

Where in the country are you as Boundless Superfast Broadband do a great Point-to-Point Service, I have them at home and I get 10/5 as opposed to the 0.5/0.5 I got from Sky because of distance from the exchange. They can offer packages up to 100/100, though for the full whack, then it's costly (obviously).

 

The other thing to do is talk to your local broadband consortium and see if they offer the wireless option. I have it from CLEO at one school which gives 10/10 as opposed to the 2/0.5).

[SchoolsBroadband]

The school you're talking about sounds a lot like us, except that our ADSL option is only 1Mbps. Our options were either a bonded solution, leased line, or ADSL and pray for FTTC to arrive at some point. The reality of the situation is that it simply isn't an ideal world, and

 

This isn't really helpful to you, but we were bailed out by Gigaclear committing to build a fibre to the property network in our village, and with any luck, come september / october we'll be looking at peak speeds of ~900Mbps up/down. Complete, total, absolute overkill, but who am I to complain!?

 

Schools Broadband were pretty awesome at answering every question I could think up, and were my preferred quote before Gigaclear gave an offer too good to refuse.

 

Yes Gigaclear network will be good where it's available although I'll eat my mouse mat if you actually ever got speeds of 900Mbit out of your connection

 

FYI we may be getting a wholesale agreement with Gigaclear so watch this space as you can have our other services bundled in with it.

 

Dave

[Driftingashore]

Yes Gigaclear network will be good where it's available although I'll eat my mouse mat if you actually ever got speeds of 900Mbit out of your connection

 

FYI we may be getting a wholesale agreement with Gigaclear so watch this space as you can have our other services bundled in with it.

 

Dave

 

Yeah, 900Mbps is quoted as the highest theoretical speed in bursts, so it's highly unlikely that we'll ever get that, or probably anywhere near. A school in a nearby village was tested at ~600Mbps though, which is still impressive - but web filters, firewalls, antivirus etc will all have their own throughput limitations that will come into play, and what we get at the end will be the speed of the lowest throughput device in the chain. I'll keep testing to see if I can wrangle 900Mbps out somehow though, as I've never seen someone attempt to eat a mouse mat before.. though I've certainly seen evidence of attempts in our IT room

 

I'd be interested in hearing if you do get a wholesale agreement with Gigaclear, though it would have to happen fairly soon if it were to affect our decision this time around.

[gsk]

SchoolsBroadband - I left a message on your website before i posted this thread! PM won't send for me either. I will give you a call next week.

 

Gigaclear looks exciting but will take a lot of engaging with the parish coucil and local community so I would imagine it would be a 12-18 month timeframe minimum?

Edited April 27, 2013 by gsk

[EXA_Mark]

Hi GSK,

 

Like others, we are happy to try and provide you some viable options. And we do offer bonding as an option, in fact we have done since 2003, although to be honest, if you are on long lines (and you sound like you may be), this too brings a different set of problems, especially if you are using MLPPP (most common type) of bonded as you will end up with a combined value of the lowest common denominator of the lines. To clarify, if you had four lines, and three were of 4Mbps and one was of 2Mbps, it would end up bring the other four down to ensure that you didn't get excess packet loss. You should also be aware (I am sure you are) that on bonded DSL 4 x 4Mbps (as an example) does not give you 16Mbps, you generally lose about 20-30% due to overheads, so if you did get 4 x 4Mbps, you would most likely see around 10-12Mbps. There are other options that I think may suit you better that I'm happy to talk about via PM, when it works.

 

Our services also include our own (in house developed) content filtering solution, SurfProtect and we are our in 12th year of providing connectivity and filtering to schools, so our experience in these sort of more challenging solutions may well help.

Edited February 6, 2015 by EXA_Mark

[Driftingashore]

This is my fault - it's an old thread I dragged up - and I hope GSK has managed to find a solution by now! Sorry!

 

 

Yes Gigaclear network will be good where it's available although I'll eat my mouse mat if you actually ever got speeds of 900Mbit out of your connection

 

 

FYI we may be getting a wholesale agreement with Gigaclear so watch this space as you can have our other services bundled in with it.

 

 

Dave

 

 

Not that I'm one to drag up old posts, but I hope you don't have a mouse mat laying about..

 

 

 

 

[KK20]

holy necropost batman.

[EXA_Mark]

And mine too for not noticing the date of the original post. It's late Friday (that is my excuse)