SWGfL Supplied ISP - Speed or not as the case may be.

[speckytecky]

We recently completed a change over to Fiber To The Cabinet through SWGfL (which I understand is actually ISP provided by Talk Talk). First day of serious use yesterday and howls of protest greeted me when I came in this morning. Was this a blip or is FTTC not the answer I wonder? Any other SWGfL area schools care to share their experiences please?

[mwbutler]

SWGFL provide our Internet and it's been pretty much unusable today. System Status shows "No known issues" so I might ring them in a bit a see what's up.

[CyberNerd]

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/security/126683-rm-ddos-attack.html

[plexer]

Indeed just got off to RM who are saying it's a DDOS attack, they use TalkTalk to provide our fibre connection so guess it's against their kit.

 

Ben

[speckytecky]

Now SWGfL have sorted out the DDOS issue I'm told by our teachers that they are still not happy with the speed of the 'new' system. Apparently trying to show streamed clips results in a total fail most of the time. Never usede to get that complaint before we switched to FTTC.

[newpersn]

What's the speed you changed to?

 

We got 30meg both ways and that seems fine.

 

We get problems during lunch times with internet speeds as kids are hamming it.

[speckytecky]

Crickey, 30meg both ways. Ours is over 30 incoming but upload barely breaks 10meg.

 

What's the speed you changed to?

 

We got 30meg both ways and that seems fine.

 

We get problems during lunch times with internet speeds as kids are hamming it.

[newpersn]

Crickey, 30meg both ways. Ours is over 30 incoming but upload barely breaks 10meg.

 

Log it with SWGFL.

[localzuk]

How many computers do you have there?

[Boredguy]

According to the proposal documents I got back in Feb, the FTTC option is asynchronous so uploads were upto 10mbps, and downloads upto 40mbps depending on local conditions.

 

If you were on fibre or copper circuit (not ADSL) then the connection would be symmetrical. I was glad to upgrade the cap for ours to 50mb as we've hit it a couple of times since the start of Sept.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Boredguy
typos

[speckytecky]

Doh me! Got my upload and download transposed. The beauties of being dyslexic!!

 

Average seems to be about:

 

Upload: 37.30 mbps

Download: 9.26 mbps

 

We have about 140 workstations but rarely more than 20 on at a time.

 

We did recently allow U-Tube for teachers but have clamped down on the lads accessing it in classrooms where they were abusing it.

 

 

Crickey, 30meg both ways. Ours is over 30 incoming but upload barely breaks 10meg.

[newpersn]

have you tested staffproxy and normal proxy?

[speckytecky]

Thanks @newperson

 

1120 hours:

 

Standard proxy

 

Download: 35.96 mbps

Upload: 9.13 mbps

 

1145 hours logged onto Staff Proxy

 

Download: 25.84 mbps

Upload: 9.03 mbps

 

have you tested staffproxy and normal proxy?

[Boredguy]

Speeds are looking typical for FTTC

[SchoolsBroadband]

Thanks @newperson

 

1120 hours:

 

Standard proxy

 

Download: 35.96 mbps

Upload: 9.13 mbps

 

1145 hours logged onto Staff Proxy

 

Download: 25.84 mbps

Upload: 9.03 mbps

 

How many pupils and workstations do you have? We recommend FTTC for primary schools but never for secondary schools unless they are very small.

 

Dave

[speckytecky]

Thanks Dave, Only just stumbled upon your reply. We are KS3 special school with 70 students with circa 50 staff. We rarely actually have more than 20 students logged on at any given time but the 10 teaching rooms will have teaching staff logged on plus there will be another 10 or so Admin machines on. Looking at a speedtest I did in Dec 2012 we were getting an upload of 10.19 mbps and a download of 9.98 mbps. Now we are getting in the order of upload: 9.26 mbps and download: 37.37 mbps. So in theory a better service.

 

However, teachers are complaining with increasing volume that when they are running video downloads such as: BBC - Learning Zone Class Clips - Aboriginal wildlife paintings - Art and Design Video at the same time that other teachers are running anything similar there isn't enough bandwidth and the video stalls. In the case of the Wildlife one the art teacher tested it at 0905 hours and all was fine but when she had her class in at 1015 hours it stalled. I suppose one factor is that the teachers are increasingly using video downloads from the likes of the BBC.

 

Is there a simple answer to resolving this I wonder?

 

 

How many pupils and workstations do you have? We recommend FTTC for primary schools but never for secondary schools unless they are very small.

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

I doubt this is a bandwidth issue. Do you have any bandwidth graphs available from SWGFL? We offer them as standard.

 

There is a big bug / issue with youtube videos we've been scratching our head for sometime about thinking it was our Fortinet firewalls traffic interception but it was actually something youtube / driver related. I'm going to do a post on this soon as this effects lots of schools and video stops after saying 20-30 seconds. Is this the same issue? This only affects youtube though, not the BBC.

 

My view is that FTTC should be absolutely fine for what you are using. it'd be interesting to see if you did a speedtest at the same time as all the staff were using the video. You could have an issue with any RM / SWGFL upstream proxy service too as this could be where the issue lies.

 

We do layer 2 bridging so we don't get this issue and don't use a proxy setting within IE.

 

Do let me know if it is the youtube issue or something else though. Happy to help.

 

Dave

[speckytecky]

Thanks Dave, It's predominantly the BBC the art teacher was having problems with. Like I said when she tested it just after 9 no problems nor again when she showed me at 1130 hours. When she had a classroom full of students though at 1015 hours the darned thing stalled. Will bear your help in mind when we come to look at renewal next year.

I doubt this is a bandwidth issue. Do you have any bandwidth graphs available from SWGFL? We offer them as standard.

 

There is a big bug / issue with youtube videos we've been scratching our head for sometime about thinking it was our Fortinet firewalls traffic interception but it was actually something youtube / driver related. I'm going to do a post on this soon as this effects lots of schools and video stops after saying 20-30 seconds. Is this the same issue? This only affects youtube though, not the BBC.

 

My view is that FTTC should be absolutely fine for what you are using. it'd be interesting to see if you did a speedtest at the same time as all the staff were using the video. You could have an issue with any RM / SWGFL upstream proxy service too as this could be where the issue lies.

 

We do layer 2 bridging so we don't get this issue and don't use a proxy setting within IE.

 

Do let me know if it is the youtube issue or something else though. Happy to help.

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

Thanks Dave, It's predominantly the BBC the art teacher was having problems with. Like I said when she tested it just after 9 no problems nor again when she showed me at 1130 hours. When she had a classroom full of students though at 1015 hours the darned thing stalled. Will bear your help in mind when we come to look at renewal next year.

 

No problem and happy to help.

 

Can you get a bandwidth graph from SWGFL? If not can you do SNMP monitoring on the uplink port of your switch to the router?

 

This will tell you what you're actually doing over your network.

 

Thanks

 

Dave