Leaving LEA broadband / network provision - anyone done it?

[pete]

Due to .....various issues, we're considering dumping our LEA connectivity / IT involvement (which is now limited, due to BadThings) and going solo.

 

Could anyone who's done this share their experiences?

What were the main pitfalls, if any?

Has anyone gone back?

How happy are LEAs about schools doing this - do they put up a lot of resistance?

Did you save money in the long run or does it cost more (but worth it)?

Who suggested the move - technical staff or SMT?

Who / what did you go with in the end?

 

And anything else people consider relevant.

 

Thanks

 

Pete

[spc-rocket]

Hi Pete,

 

We were with EMBC but have now gone over to NTL for their 8mb leased line (1:1 contention ration). Never had a problem with NTL and they do have service level agreements and stick to it!. EMBC has so much red tape it drove up mad trying to open up ports, they lost our requests twice!, the internet went down without any notice and our 2mb service was saturated completely so it was time to move to another supplier. The 2mb line is only from the school router to the local concentrator and after this other schools may jump in as well so essentially sharing the connection.

 

There was no notice of potential problems with connection or informing us of any planned ourtages. We were promised the 10mb service a year and half ago but nothing materialised they have just started rolling out the 10mb service now so not sure what it will be like but to be honest sometime their helpdesk (fujitsu) appears to have no clue as to how to deal with problems and some staff are completely remain baffled (i.e. no idea how to do that) when we try to request the most basic services/request.

 

One positive thing about EMBC was its email filtering yes i'm saying email filtering and not web filtering. We didn't have much spam and it was easier to control and manage the settings for our domain via web browser. As for their web filtering solution its completely the opposite, only 50 local URL! that you can request to be blocked or allowed - how silly is this. Apparently it used to be only 30 before, my colleague tells me. :?

 

LEAs don't like you to do this bacause they want to keep all schools with RBCs (regional broadband consortia) and there are plans to share resources across the national educational network (NEN) which all RBC will be involved in at some stage. I say at some stage because the NEN is yet defined on how or what it will cover - there are guidelines drawn up by BECTA but the its still in the early stages.

 

NTL are looking to get Becta accreditation which allow them to provide services as whole or partly to RBCs.

 

Things to look out for:

 

- The cost of net connection

- Email filtering

- Web filtering

- Domain name/content hosting

- Public IP addresses

- How the connection is delivered i.e. managed router, serial lines or direct ethernet

 

HTH,

 

Ashok.

[SpuffMonkey]

Care to give us a rough guide to how much your connectivity costs, Ashok??

[alan-d]

Just to complicate the question - has anyone gone through a partial move? ie kept the good bits from their LEA put moved outside for other services.

[Geoff]

Most LEA contracts wont allow that.

[spc-rocket]

Yeah agree with Geoff,

 

Most LEAs don't allow this kind of separation. The solution embc uses for its email filtering is a solution from emailsystems which you can buy as well. http://www.emailsystems.com

 

The issues here is why does do people have to move away from RBCs? this is the question that the RBCs need to really look at and take note of the concerns schools have.

 

Ash.

[Geoff]

Seems to me its lack of flexibilty. They are generally too resctrictive to devolve control of the internet connectivity and associated services to let the schools do what they want. Fair enough some schools don't have the technical know how to effectively do that but some do.

[_Rob_]

It's interesting to see the issues that others have with their connection. We have all primary schools on 10MB and all high schools on 100MB and there are no complaints that I'm aware of.

 

I have heard other LEAs talking about 'issues' but wasn't sure what kind of connectivity they offered.

 

Rob.

[Geoff]

At the moment the only issue I have with our LEA is their webfiltering. It misses far too much stuff. I have solved the problem locally with a Linux box running Dansguardian but I shouldn't have to really.

[spc-rocket]

Rob,

 

There is no consistency between the different LEAs or RBCs on even the bandwidth they provide i.e. like you say your primary schools have 10mb connections and secondaries 100mb, well over here in the Midlands they have just started to upgrade the secondaries to 10mb. This is one example of course but there are lots of other inconsistencies i.e:

 

- the number of public ip allowed

- forcing the usage of their proxy server

- providing restrictive access on selected public ip(s).

- poor filtering and restrictive control to manage each school's filtering

 

Ashok.

[Jake]

Indeed, our LEA just provided us with 10mb a few months ago. Though we very rarely get speeds of 5mb, let alone 10. We pay 13k a year to them for it too. (including filtering, which doesnt filter terribly well anyway). Just for them to open some ports for our webserver we had to fill out several forms, get written permission from the queen and donate a kidney each.

[pete]

@ashok - thanks for the info.

 

@Rob - it's very different between LEAs. I'm green with envy about some of the things people on here can do with their LEA.

 

There's no clear divison (acceptance?) of responsibility, catfights amongst the different parts, the decisions seem arbitrary and there's no accountability. Costs are never explained.

 

@Jake - what size school are you? IIRC, embc calculate cost of connectivity based upon school size. We're paying 6K at the moment for a 2MB SDSL line which is maxed on the download, but barely touched on the upload. We'd get more benefit from an 8mb downpipe with a good contention ratio.

[GrumbleDook]

I'd like to point people to the last newsletter again.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=68

 

This give recommendations for schools who are looking at what to do when their RBC is up for renewal ... the things that are needed to be set out, but you can easily take the information and look at it for what you want in a new ISP.

 

We are moving to our RBC ... partly politics, but partly because we know we can make it work and if it doesn't they will get a serious amount of grief as we have the interest of Becta and the SSAT in this.

 

Come Easter I will be publishing a case study in how to make and RBC work to the demands for your school. This is likely to be published by the SSAT and it has made me a little unpopular with EMBC (some of which Russell caught by mistake).

 

There are other options open to schools, but remember that unless you are moving to something that will eventually be on the NEN you will have further costs down the line. It will eventually become compulsary.

[webman]

From this forum I can see that there is large inconsistencies between LEAs. For us to have a port opened they only need it in an email to one of the technical engineers.

[Ric_]

@webman: We are at the other end of the spectrum... we don't have a public IP and can't even have outbound ports opened!

 

Our RBC is very good though and is making an effort to rectify this. All schools have decent Internet pipes and the infrastructure is all in place for video conferencing and the like on the NEN.

[ChrisH]

All schools have decent Internet pipes and the infrastructure is all in place for video conferencing and the like on the NEN.

 

Unless you live near me then you have a shadey wireless connection bouncing around several sites .

[Jake]

Pete - We are a secondary school, roughly 900-1000 students on roll.

[spc-rocket]

Jake,

 

What RBC/LEA is your school with? from whjat you are saying it looks like the sign of EMBC

 

Few things about the NEN, i wish there was some headway on this, we keep hearing about the usual not available if you are not with an RBCs (well schools would be with RBCs if they provide the kinds of services which schools require!) and it will be compusary to be with an RBC. The probably single biggest mistake form the LEA/or RBCs is the word compusary, sorry but i just can't see this happening. It usually starts up with talks like that but the people who make decisions will realise that there will need to be flexible and not force, let me say this again force schools to be with an RBC so they can have access to NEN.

 

The idea of RBC is good and well done to those who have come up with it, but these inconsistencies and other issues needs to be ironed out and let the RBCs mature for few years before inforcing rule like NEN access etc. Schools will move back to RBCs if they get better and allow flexibility that schools require. They need to listen to the schools (who are their main users/customers) on what they want. I applaude the things Tony and others are doing to get somekind of dialogue going with the relavant people/parties in RBC(s) to make them at least aware of the issues schools are facing.

 

Time to cut out the politics and red tape and provide the services that really matter to schools.

 

Ashok.

[Jake]

We're down here on the sunny (pfft), south coast, in Portsmouth

[GrumbleDook]

A further note on the NEN via RBC line ...

 

All stakeholders with an ICT/IT slant within education agree that the NEN is a good thing ... irregardless of political agendas.

 

The differences of opinions are with regards to how schools connect. It has been decided (rightly or wrongly) that Becta are the group that decide the standards that must be met for a school to connect. Some of these are very convoluted and take some ploughing through. It also relies on a certain amount of technical knowledge that not all schools are lucky to have.

 

RBCs are regarded as a cost effective method of getting a large number of schools online with the NEN (or usually within the RBC MAN who have access to resources on the NEN) and LEAs/RBCs invest a good amount of time and money looking into an effective solution.

 

There is a major downside to this. It means that to achieve this level of homogenisation you have to have everyone on the same network. The easiest way is to tell schools "it will be this way". For a lot of schools this works very well ... for schools that have already invested the time and effort looking at other solutions they may disagree with the RBC findings.

 

There are a number of groups out there that want schools to have a level of independence to allow them to still be innovative and challenge the way things are done (eg SSAT) but they also realise that schools have to use the funding sensibly.

 

Gone are the days when a school can get a bit of extra funding to try a bizarre yet productive trial, the money isn't there. And the correct use of funding to have ensure that it has an impact on the learning and teaching is actually part of the "every child matters" theme that is inherint from OFSTED.

 

There are possible solutions. ISPs that are accreditted poviders to connect you to the NEN are about ... and more are applying.

 

You can always turn round to your RBC and tell them you want to do things a certain way because you know the criteria from Becta and the fact that they want to block x, y & z will mean that you cannot take part in activities that are beneficial to the learning of the students.

 

Then you also have a chance when the RBC comes up for renewal to ensure that certain things are changed. Make sure that you have an SLA betwwen the school and the RBC ... they schould be accountable and failure of that means you are letting your students down (another OFSTED thing).

 

And last but not least ... it all depends on whether you are buying into / out of an RBC for the connection.

 

Most RBCs provide additional services. The whole package is Connectivity, Content and Services. A 10 meg pipe might actually only be a 6-8 meg pipe to the internet but more to MAN content and services. A number of the NEN resources are actually hosted within an RBC, so even if you connect to the NEN via another ISP there is no guarantee that you can access the same stuff as the school down the road. And then the services are items which may cost you extra money to host yourself anyway ... email, filtering, etc ...

 

I'll be honest and say that a lot of this is politics ... and that it is always a good idea not to get into county / RBC politics ... the best you can do is inform your Head / line manager in SMT ... and make sure they are aware of the implications ... costs ... time ... staffing ... access to materials ... and the different options.

[m25man]

There is nothing else to add, Tony has said it all.

 

There are advantages/dis-advantages from both aspects but the advantages of being seamlessly connected to the NGFL access to LEA resources and potential for growth in VLE connected schools, isolating one's self outside in the rain on your own seems a bit big step to take.

 

As we will no doubt shortly see, the takeup of ADSL2+ and 802.16 WiMax in the UK will boost lastmile speeds into both our homes and schools.

WiMax mesh networks will reduce the need for expensive fibers and the RBC's will be able to provision schools at higher speeds and lower costs.

 

The RBC's will have to play leapfrog with advances in network technology and schools will have to learn to be patient as the systems adapt to higher demands and heavier loads.

 

The grass always looks greener on the other side of the street but when you cross over is full of worm casts!

[Gatt]

Our school has been considering leaving our LEA, but there are 2 items that they control and do well at - these are the IP Phones and the SIMS servers

 

Looking for info on how you lot tackled migrating SIMS, and the IP phones if you use them.

 

We are going to cost getting in new switches and Exchange & ISA servers, etc most of which we can do here