Moving School Internet Connection

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

We're considering moving away from our LA provided connection, as the stability is less than great and it's overcomplicated.

 

Based on the experience here, what's a 100Mb/s synchronous connection likely to cost us, and who are suppliers to use (or avoid)?

 

Is more than 100Mb/s viable in this day and age, and again what are likely costs?

 

TIA

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I'd be happy to quote you for a 100mbps line, we can go up to 1gbps also, but costs do rise steeply.

 

Drop me a PM with your requirements and I shall pop something together for you

[APMerry]

I'm in a similar situation. Our internet speed is awful now and our supplier just says there's no problem with the line. What sort of average download speed would you expect from a 100mbps line?

[HarryMonkey]

We're in then process of changing our provider and, after talking to several companies, decided on exponential-e.

[localzuk]

It really depends on your location for costs. Where I am here, its super expensive. Where I was 2 years ago, it was pretty cheap.

[Oaktech]

Before you look at 100mbps, check that you can't get a city fibre connection... Network

 

They are doing us a 1gbps connection for 4k a year less than virgin wanted for a 100mbps connection!

[SchoolsBroadband]

We've done 100/100 from about £5.5kpa.

 

The biggest we've done is 1Gbit on 1Gbit for £24kpa.

 

Dave

[Oaktech]

We are a 1gbps symmetric uncontended on a 10gbps bearer and we are signed up for 5 years at £10k8 a year. Install of the fibre was free. Virgin quoted us £14k2 for 100mbps and they also wanted £8k to install the fibre as our original connection was a 10 on 10.

[localzuk]

Ok. Now I'm sad.

[Gongalong]

We are a 1gbps symmetric uncontended on a 10gbps bearer and we are signed up for 5 years at £10k8 a year. Install of the fibre was free.

Can I ask who that's with?

[Oaktech]

Thats with City Fibre/Gigler. Their upstream provider is C4L. CityFibre

[Gardinho]

Try EXA Networks. We are now with them and our bill halved. Excellent service and support too.

[synaesthesia]

We did this a couple of years ago, plumping with Schools Broadband.

In the process of checking various suppliers and from what we've heard from other local schools, the most positive were easily SB, Exa and M247 and the worst were Exponential E, Virgin and BT who either gave false information, promises they'd not be able to keep or clearly didn't give a crap about schools until after we told them where to go.

[IrritableTech]

We too recently moved from our LEA supplier.

@Gongalong Do you know what kind of bandwidth you are using at the moment?

 

I set up a 'The Dude' install to keep an eye on my router well before moving suppliers. We've got a 100/100Mbps fibre through @SchoolsBroadband now, and typically use around 35-45Mbps bursting up to 80-90Mbps every so often. We've 450 machines.

[SchoolsBroadband]

"The Dude" is awesome

[Gongalong]

Do you know what kind of bandwidth you are using at the moment?

It's synchronous 100Mb/s. Technically we have 92 available as a chunk is used for the LEA phone system, which we're also likely to be moving away from.

 

We use The Dude for LAN monitoring (just pinging devices), but haven't delved much further than that.

[Oaktech]

It is indeed... We used Dude on our old connection when everyone was complaining about it, only to discover our usage was almost solid 10mb from 8.45 to 4.30! We ran it again on our new connection and we now only use about 4mbps continuous because of the extra bandwidth overhead things arrive faster so overall we use less.

[Synkrox]

I switched to BT on a 100/100 line, with a Fortigate UTM security/filtering device. As our web and email servers were already inhouse it was pretty painless to be honest. Even moving the sch.uk domain was a piece of cake, just switched registrar tags.

[IWDave]

We moved from LEA to BT in 2011; We have a direct 1Gb 1:1 Fibre Line straight onto Colossus (throttled at 100/100), we can change our throttle in about 20 minutes all the way to 1,000/1,000 or in steps of whenever we like providing we foot the bill. Granted it comes with a cost, so definitely shop around!

We jumped from 10/10, 20/20, 100/100 since 2011. We also manage our own firewall and web filtering services in-site.

[IrritableTech]

It's synchronous 100Mb/s. Technically we have 92 available as a chunk is used for the LEA phone system, which we're also likely to be moving away from.

 

We use The Dude for LAN monitoring (just pinging devices), but haven't delved much further than that.

 

If you have managed switches you should be able to monitor the port which connects to your edge router using sntp and 'the dude'. You can then keep an eye on the graph it produces to see your utilisation.

 

If you give us an estimate on the size of school, I'm sure @SchoolsBroadband could give you an idea on the average they see from customers of a similar size.

 

The only reason why I asked is because some providers will adapt your connection to fit your requirements and budget.

 

We've just moved broadband as I said. New phones coming in the next few weeks too.

[Gongalong]

We have a Smoothwall, so have a good idea of utilisation. It can max out at times, and of course Internet usage is only increasing.

 

I've asked SchoolsBroadband for a quote. I've also asked VM and BT. SchoolsBroadband replied immediately. Needless to say I've been waiting 5 days for VM and BT and still nothing. Sigh...