Secondary school internet connection speed survey

[nikaso]

I wanted to do a quick survey of internet connection speeds in schools. Because the poll facility doesn't allow much finesse as regards different types of schools and connections I have created an online survey, it's anonymous (I'm not trying to flog your data to market research companies!)

 

I'll close the survey after a couple of weeks and post a link to the results here. I think it would be interesting to compare what similar schools have, might be good for negotiating purposes with SLT or you might be counting your blessings!

 

Here is the link

[Steve21]

Out of curiosity what do you have?

 

Done the above, but we're on 100Mb (Only recently as the school was running 30Mb before I joined), for 7-800~ pupils

 

Steve

[Sagima]

I put 100MB but then I remembered we have two of those

[FN-GM]

200mb but we are a multi academy trusts with a few schools.

[6Foot2]

100 Mb. Single academy.

[SchoolsBroadband]

We're starting to see a lot more secondary schools take speeds of 200Mbit and above......

[IrritableTech]

Bandwidth is a funny thing. You've asked how many pupils, but not concurrent devices. You've asked how much bandwidth the school has been sold, but not how much is utilised or the connection capable of carrying.

 

Utilisation is key. A school of 2000 users, but a poor use of technology in the class room might use a fraction of the bandwidth of a school of 500 who run a 1:1 scheme.

 

Thanks for creating the form, and thanks to those who fill it in. It will be interesting to see the results, but I don't think it'll necessarily be overly useful to someone looking for a new connection without the right background information in the specific school.

[Marshall_IT]

I've filled it in but i agree with @IrritableTech, we have under 1500 students (for now, expanding by 30 power year over the next 5 years) but run a 1to1 scheme from 7-11 and staff (some have 2:1 with a laptop too) and good uptake on our BYOD scheme in 6th form (which next year with start to be on the 1to1 scheme too).

 

We're on 100 leased line + 80 EoFTTC which will be upgraded to 200/1000 or 300/1000 once our current contract ends.

[Paid_Peanuts]

500MB on 1GB bearer with Virgin Media Business.

[ITGURU]

We have 100meg Symmetrical circuit. At peak times of the day, never usually goes over 40meg.

[Opendium_Steve]

Bandwidth is a funny thing. You've asked how many pupils, but not concurrent devices.

 

Do you think the number of concurrent devices is going to make a significant difference to the amount of bandwidth needed? Is someone with three devices (tablet, phone, workstation) going to use significantly more bandwidth than someone with only one device? They aren't likely to be watching three videos concurrently just because they have three devices.

[Steve21]

Do you think the number of concurrent devices is going to make a significant difference to the amount of bandwidth needed? Is someone with three devices (tablet, phone, workstation) going to use significantly more bandwidth than someone with only one device? They aren't likely to be watching three videos concurrently just because they have three devices.

 

I think that was more a point in regards to 1000 students, could be 10 devices, or 100 students with 100 devices. Just because 1000 student's doesn't mean a set number of devices

 

Steve

[FN-GM]

Do you think the number of concurrent devices is going to make a significant difference to the amount of bandwidth needed? Is someone with three devices (tablet, phone, workstation) going to use significantly more bandwidth than someone with only one device? They aren't likely to be watching three videos concurrently just because they have three devices.

@Steve21 is bang on. also if someone does have 3 devices they are unlikely to be using them at the same time however it will still use more bandwidth. All the devices will be using the internet when not being used. It could be something minor like Whatapps or could be something big like downloading software updates. I have found that mobile devices tend to have quite a bit of "chatter" when on wifi. They keep contacting home. Windows 8 is quite bad for this.

[pcstru]

We have 100MB symmetrical but we also have a failover line. Last term was the first time we have saturated the download limit at peak times. I'm looking at throttling users to see if we can stretch a bit more out of it before we need to spend money to upgrade it.

[6Foot2]

...I'm looking at throttling users...

 

I feel like doing that sometimes.

 

[nikaso]

We've got a 100mbit on a gig bearer but we share this with one of our primaries which isn't something I'm overly fond of but I've inherited. No one to one byod yet at least!

[IrritableTech]

Do you think the number of concurrent devices is going to make a significant difference to the amount of bandwidth needed? Is someone with three devices (tablet, phone, workstation) going to use significantly more bandwidth than someone with only one device? They aren't likely to be watching three videos concurrently just because they have three devices.

 

 

I think others have made good responses to this question, but even before thinking about BYOD devices schools can have dramatically different pupil to device ratios. Then we need to look at storage models for example. Schools heavily using cloud storage for example would dramatically increase required bandwidth.

 

As the technical director of a company that delivers filtering solutions and network consultation what are your experiences? Do you provide solutions based on x amount of users, devices or something entirely different and may I ask why?

[nikaso]

Some interim results, I've only posted Secondary and Primary because there aren't enough responses in the other groups to be worthwhile, later I will probably filter by size (for e.g. schools with more than 1000 pupils). If there are any particular filtering requests feel free to ask!

 

Secondary Schools:

 

 

 

 

Primary Schools

 

 

 

Edited August 20, 2015 by nikaso

[Steve21]

I want to know who the secondary schools with gig internet, and primaries with 200 are so I can stab them Jealous haha

 

Steve

[CESIL]

Well we are a primary with 366 pupils and 8Mb internet grrrr.

If we had an extra 34 pupils we would qualify for 20 though...anybody got any pupils we can have? On second thoughts forget that request as I know what sort of pupils we will end up with 😀

[jertsy]

We are an accademy with 500 pupils and 50 staff we have a 50MB symmetrical connection.

[SchoolsBroadband]

we've actually just provisioned quite a few 500/1Gbit lines for secondary schools. As more data goes to the cloud from onsite people want access to faster and faster broadband connections to get at it.

[Opendium_Steve]

we've actually just provisioned quite a few 500/1Gbit lines for secondary schools. As more data goes to the cloud from onsite people want access to faster and faster broadband connections to get at it.

 

Funny story - a while ago we had someone propose cutting costs by replacing their leased line with an ADSL *and* moving all their internal servers out to the cloud. They were informed that it was a very bad plan (thankfully they took the advice!)

[nikaso]

OK, I've closed the survey now and here is the results link, apparently it lets you manipulate filters etc. The password for it is EduGEEK22

[RichCowell]

I've not been checking in with EduGeek while I've been off over summer, so missed this survey, but just tried to look at the results and it says the password's incorrect...