Recommended ISP's and solutions

[speckytecky]

It's coming up to the time when our SWGfL agreement is due for renewal again now and quite frankly we havent been 100% happy with the FTTC solution we currently have - mostly it's ok but I've had it in the neck a few times because of laggy YouTube streaming. Filtering and monitoring have been excellent but overall I'm wondering if it's time we shopped around?

 

What are others in the SWGfL area usung nowadays please?

[IrritableTech]

What does your FTTC sync at? How many users have you got, how many devices? Could it be a router issue, rather than a bandwidth one?

 

It could be that your FTTC circuit isn't up to the job, or the SWGfL infrastructure isn't. The cost of full fibre from FTTC is quite a leap if you're looking down that route - but isn't to say another provider wouldn't be cheaper than your RBC.

[Millgate]

Hi Speckytecky,

 

I can get one of our comms guys to give you a call and run through some options with you if you wish?

 

Luke

[SWGfL_Official]

Hi,

 

All SWGfL ADSL and FttC services are designed to provide schools with highest performance possible (factsheet) and they have no operational contention.

 

Have you contacted the service desk to talk about your performance, and check that there aren't any technical issues?

 

It may well be that we need to think about an alternative solution as your bandwidth requirements have grown, please do get in contact with us to talk about the options, including:

 

Bonded FttC

EoSFBB (Ethernet over Superfast Broadband)

Dedicated Fibre

 

The Schools Internet Service team can be contacted via email [email protected] or telephone 0845 601 3203 M-F 8.30am - 6pm

 

Thanks Julia

[Oaktech]

Check to see if you can get Gigler/City Fibre. It's the Mutts!

[ICTDirect_Dave]

It's always best to shop around, let me know if we can help

[speckytecky]

Thanks @Oaktech - seems it's only available in the Bournemouth area currently.

 

Check to see if you can get Gigler/City Fibre. It's the Mutts!

[witch]

We've had huge issues with the broadband - it is very iffy and we are currently receiving 5.5mbps in one school. I have complained on several occasions to no avail.

We aren't Fibre to Cabinet but should still get closer to what we pay for.

In the other, the signal just disappears quite often and the supplier has to "re-calibrate"

We are also thinking of changing supplier - it really isn't very good.

[Oaktech]

Thanks @Oaktech - seems it's only available in the Bournemouth area currently.

 

Gigler is, but City Fibre is available all over the place...

 

Network

[Bananas]

Might be worth looking if you're quite close to the cab if an ISP can do FTTPOD (fibre to the premises on demand) only a few providers will sell it, it's not well known about and the costs are extortionate if you're a long way from the cab, it's worth a look if you're close though as you can get 330Mbps

[speckytecky]

Thanks @Oaktech - sadly it's not in my neck of the woods yet. Looks good and always handy to follow a recommendation.

 

Gigler is, but City Fibre is available all over the place...

 

Network

[IrritableTech]

@speckytecky - Tell us your numbers - it's pointless people suggesting a gigabit leased line if you've only 20 staff and 30 devices.

 

Concurrent users, devices, current sync speed etc.

[speckytecky]

Good point. EDB KS3 school. 35 FTE Staff, 70 students. A whopping 200 devices grabbing DHCP leases. Nine classes with 8 lads per class.

 

Teachers all have iPads plus extra 16 iPads for the lads over the Summer, corridor CCTV Cameras and VOIP phone system coming in as well.

 

@speckytecky - Tell us your numbers - it's pointless people suggesting a gigabit leased line if you've only 20 staff and 30 devices.

 

Concurrent users, devices, current sync speed etc.

[Oaktech]

@speckytecky - Tell us your numbers - it's pointless people suggesting a gigabit leased line if you've only 20 staff and 30 devices.

 

Concurrent users, devices, current sync speed etc.

 

If you can get the City Fibre offering whether you need gig or not the price they charge is worth it... We are on a 1gig link with 99% uptime and compensation, unlimited data usage but a 20mbps continuous usage. That costs us 10k a year. Thats 4k a year less than our old SWGFL/Virgin connection at 10mbps.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Oaktech

[SchoolsBroadband]

Julia,

 

What on earth is no operational contention meant to mean?

 

If swgfl are using Bt wholesale based fttc then there is no sla on delivering bandwidth back to the wholesale ISP so speeds can vary depending on

 

1. The number of live fftc connections compared to the backhaul from the fttc cabinet back to the exchange

2. The amount of 21cn bandwidth bought by the wholesale isp from bt wholesale via the ISPs interconnect

3. The size of the ISPs interconnect into bt wholesale

4. The upstream links from the exchange into BTs 21cn network

 

The only kind of fttc which has any kind of bandwidth guarantee is Ethernet over fttc (eofttc) or Generic Ethernet Access fttc (gea-fttc)

 

It really annoys me when some companies make up "spin" words or phrases to make schools believe they are getting a 1:1 contention ratio when they are blatantly not :-(

 

Rant over

 

Dave

 

Hi,

 

All SWGfL ADSL and FttC services are designed to provide schools with highest performance possible (factsheet) and they have no operational contention.

 

Have you contacted the service desk to talk about your performance, and check that there aren't any technical issues?

 

It may well be that we need to think about an alternative solution as your bandwidth requirements have grown, please do get in contact with us to talk about the options, including:

 

Bonded FttC

EoSFBB (Ethernet over Superfast Broadband)

Dedicated Fibre

 

The Schools Internet Service team can be contacted via email [email protected] or telephone 0845 601 3203 M-F 8.30am - 6pm

 

Thanks Julia

[Bananas]

I'm assuming they are implying that there is no contention within their own network.

 

Means absolutely stuff all in the real world if BT have under provisioned bandwidth to the cabinet/exchange/aggregation node/regional backhaul etc.

 

FTTC is a locally contended product and it maybe that you're suffering if lots of other users on your PCP are spanking it or BT have stuffed something up or it could be related to crosstalk if there's a lot of lines activated in that PCP.

 

Last time I was involved in a large scale broadband project including filtering and anti-virus after much fiddling around I proved the point to our transit provider (C+W) that the provided filtering and av appliances were struggling with the load and as a result they were effectively throttling the connection down before it even hit the ISPs internet connection. Removing the boxes from the data centre and having them local to each school in the chain solved the issue.

 

If your provider are saying it's not them and then BT start claiming it's not them i'd be looking in that direction to make sure the filtering product is fast enough to keep up. This was many years ago now so it's probably not related given how much faster processors etc are but worth considering.

[IrritableTech]

Good point. EDB KS3 school. 35 FTE Staff, 70 students. A whopping 200 devices grabbing DHCP leases. Nine classes with 8 lads per class.

 

Teachers all have iPads plus extra 16 iPads for the lads over the Summer, corridor CCTV Cameras and VOIP phone system coming in as well.

 

Seventy students, or seven hundred? Two students to one staff sounds like bliss!

 

Do you know what your FTTC sync's at? Or do SWGfL not let you see this?