Schools Broadband issues

[localzuk]

A figure like that would be a simple case of "this is the point where we won't contest you ending the contract early". I mean, a company can't really set its own rules as to what accounts to a breach of contract. Only a court can decide that, or both parties coming to an agreement.

 

So, whilst that figure is not likely published in a document anywhere for customer consumption, it is likely their internal benchmark.

 

Bear in mind that 95% means a total downtime of 438 hours per year, which would be bad on a piece of wet string, let alone on a leased line solution.

 

Realistically, they would likely lose in a court if it went that far. If their "credits" all revolve around 99.9x+ then dropping all the way to 95% is a huge drop, and wouldn't have a leg to stand on in a court.

[synaesthesia]

Again, this may be something they need to look at in their paperwork - not just SB, but many providers. I've been studying SLA's from various providers including Virgin's leased lines (SB's SLA isn't far off identical) which also state there is no recourse other than service credits. There is absolutely no mention of anything further than that. Service credits don't give peace of mind when education & safeguarding is impacted, so maybe education specific providers might need to look a bit more closely at that. Again from a layman's point of view, if the SLA states 99.98%, service credits up until that point would obviously be acceptable (contracts are signed with that in mind) but should things be worse then everything is up in the air. I'd be happy to fight against that sort of thing in court with high expectations of batting anyone down that says otherwise. Put clearly, if something isn't in a contract, the contract holder has no right to assume legal rights over the contractee.

[mavhc]

Good news: we have free internet for the next 47 years, bad news: it's the same quality as we have now

[SchoolsBroadband]

Perhaps could David @SchoolsBroadband clarify where we can see the 95% figure? I have it in an email from another director that there are 2 levels so to speak, the SLA levels below which service credits can be claimed and the breach of contract level which is obviously set lower and SB have it stipulated as 95%.

 

Bob was meaning if there was a complete sustained failure over a very long period of time as per the other posts here our SLA's are very similar to the carriers as we back to back it with them regarding the connectivity piece at least. The SLA's we set for the Fortigate and Lightspeed are our own and we get no service credits from our suppliers should they fail for whatever reason although we do pay up for customers if their are any outages as per the SLA which is above and beyond all other providers I know of. I'd obviously prefer to never have to invoke an SLA credit as we'd be hitting our SLA or better (as we have for most customers) but we do offer the service credits in our SLA as I think it's only fair carriers should do in the event the SLA isn't lived up to.

 

Dave

[Primus]

Bob was meaning if there was a complete sustained failure over a very long period of time as per the other posts here our SLA's are very similar to the carriers as we back to back it with them regarding the connectivity piece at least. The SLA's we set for the Fortigate and Lightspeed are our own and we get no service credits from our suppliers should they fail for whatever reason although we do pay up for customers if their are any outages as per the SLA which is above and beyond all other providers I know of. I'd obviously prefer to never have to invoke an SLA credit as we'd be hitting our SLA or better (as we have for most customers) but we do offer the service credits in our SLA as I think it's only fair carriers should do in the event the SLA isn't lived up to.

 

Dave

 

Glad to see Schools Broadband have got everything working now and all their customers are happy...

[SchoolsBroadband]

Glad to see Schools Broadband have got everything working now and all their customers are happy...

 

I think that will take some time to rebuild trust with those effected. We've plenty which are still happy of course that haven't had any issues whatsoever but those people generally don't jump up and down and say what a great service we give where as the unhappy ones do for different reasons.

 

Another Fortigate cluster has been upgraded to the new FortiOS this week and the remaining ones will be done shortly too which remove the bugs which were in v5.2.8

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Primus]

I think that will take some time to rebuild trust with those effected. We've plenty which are still happy of course that haven't had any issues whatsoever but those people generally don't jump up and down and say what a great service we give where as the unhappy ones do for different reasons.

 

Another Fortigate cluster has been upgraded to the new FortiOS this week and the remaining ones will be done shortly too which remove the bugs which were in v5.2.8

 

Thanks

 

Dave

 

Erm.......

 

I was being *sarcastic*

[synaesthesia]

As said, let's keep it civil please.

[TIOAOA]

We've plenty which are still happy of course that haven't had any issues whatsoever but those people generally don't jump up and down and say what a great service we give where as the unhappy ones do for different reasons.

 

 

Isn't this standard in IT, people only ever notice and make a fuss when things don't work, when everything is working fine we go unnoticed despite scurrying around behind the scenes working our fingers to the bone.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Isn't this standard in IT, people only ever notice and make a fuss when things don't work, when everything is working fine we go unnoticed despite scurrying around behind the scenes working our fingers to the bone.

 

generally yes. That said though from one particularly large MAT our SD department received a huge bunch of flowers and the 1st line team a huge box of sweeties for doing a good job. You know who you are so thank you very much

[nathan]

Erm.......

 

I was being *sarcastic*

 

I'm pretty sure everyone including Schools Broadband knew you were being *sarcastic*, everyone was being a little more grown up about it......

 

Your comments are helping nobody.

[elsiegee40]

 

I see there's issues. I see SchoolsBroadband talking to people. Issues may or may not being resolved and the speed of resolution may or may not be acceptable. I am not joining that debate.

 

However, as in every other thread, we expect Edugeeks to remain civil with each other regardless of how frustrated or angry they are.

 

There is no place for sarcasm or personal attacks as a means of expressing your frustration against an individual or organisation that is a member of this forum.

 

Before I get attacked for defending a sponsor, I am not doing that. I am asking that everyone keeps things civil as I have done in other threads.

 

Please don't make me resort to the red block caps, post editing and PMs. This isn't the Political forum

Edited December 13, 2016 by elsiegee40

[Blue_Cookeh]

Just as an aside to all this, I've had smokeping running for a few days now monitoring our connection at various points. May be worth others doing the same? I'm using cURL to do HTTP checks through Lightspeed and standard ping for other sites so we get some idea of what's going wrong all the way from the SB provided CPE, through to their NTE and out onto the Internet.

 

 

 

[clockend25]

Issue today. 1/2MB speeds on our line this morning; apparently an issue with their leased line provider. Being investigated currently.

[CyBeRkId2002]

Another day, another outage!

 

I had typed a few hundred words about how I feel about the company but I do not feel this is the time or place to share.

 

What I will say is this:

 

SchoolsBroadband cannot and are not fulfilling the promises they made to us (and apparently many other schools)

SchoolsBroadband SLA is quite simply not worth the paper it is written on... the reimbursement they offer for unacceptable levels of outage is actually an insult

SchoolsBroadband customer service (from the bottom to the top - we have been dealing with some high-up members of staff) is appalling

SchoolsBroadband do not deserve schools money - full stop!

 

if you want more info, get in touch.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Another day, another outage!

I had typed a few hundred words about how I feel about the company but I do not feel this is the time or place to share.

 

What I will say is this:

 

SchoolsBroadband cannot and are not fulfilling the promises they made to us (and apparently many other schools)

SchoolsBroadband SLA is quite simply not worth the paper it is written on... the reimbursement they offer for unacceptable levels of outage is actually an insult

SchoolsBroadband customer service (from the bottom to the top - we have been dealing with some high-up members of staff) is appalling

SchoolsBroadband do not deserve schools money - full stop!

 

if you want more info, get in touch.

 

I would second all of this apart from i would say the customer service is a bit hit and miss and not always bad. I have been having speed issues since Friday, depending on who i get on the other end depends on the service i get.. and to what fault i am experiencing..

 

Since Friday my fault has been one of the following;

- Congenstion issue

- Someone internally is using all the bandwidth

- Latency issues found

- We cant see any problem

- Problem with external supplier

- NNI issue

 

I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it is a combination of all of these!? Surely? Maybe.. hmm....

Edited December 14, 2016 by Wubbalubbadub
Spelling & Grammar

[nikaso]

I would second all of this apart from i would say the customer service is a bit hit and miss and not always bad. I have been having speed issues since Friday, depending on who i get on the other end depends on the service i get.. and to what fault i am experiencing..

 

Since Friday my fault has been one of the following;

- Congenstion issue

- Someone internally is using all the bandwidth

- Latency issues found

- We cant see any problem

- Problem with external supplier

- NNI issue

 

I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it is a combination of all of these!? Surely? Maybe.. hmm....

 

Had slow speeds yesterday and was told it was lots of traffic to Microsoft, same issue this morning and apparently there is a problem with load balancing some schools are experiencing so they will be moving us to a different network interface out-of-hours.

[tinca492]

speeds ok here and yesterday. I assume the increased traffic is due to update Tuesday? if it is then their infrastructure isn't scaled effectively as this load increase is predictable.

 

I will be discussing a fairly long agenda with our account manager next week. I would also like to know how to join the "many customers" that have been unaffected by all of these issues

[clockend25]

Had slow speeds yesterday and was told it was lots of traffic to Microsoft, same issue this morning and apparently there is a problem with load balancing some schools are experiencing so they will be moving us to a different network interface out-of-hours.

Had the same message yesterday, a 1Gbps interface is experiencing huge load so they're moving people away over the next 24-48 hours.

[nathan]

We've been OK so far. Regarding their customer services, always found them helpful even if I don't like some of their answers - I don't think anyone does when it involves downtime. Was even receiving emails from Tom on a Sunday morning. I've never had that from any other service.

[tj2419]

We've just had another outage now. Due to lightspeed by the looks of it.

[Spence_101]

Had our daily outage here again. Internet been completely down for 20 minutes and has just come back. Certainly cannot be relied upon which in this day and age is unacceptable when you're essentially paying such a high amount for business internet.

[IrritableTech]

Had the same message yesterday, a 1Gbps interface is experiencing huge load so they're moving people away over the next 24-48 hours.

 

Us too. We were pushing 100Mbps through are connection most of yesterday but there was some packet loss. Hopefully the new port will even things out a bit. Excellent communication from Tom on the service desk liaising with us about a good time to move us over - thanks @SchoolsBroadband.

[Fazza]

Anybody seen our missing bandwidth?? Most of it's been nicked as we have bugger all again for most of the morning.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Didn't see any down time this morning, but it was definitely slow. Looking at our latency graphs things jumped from 10-20ms average up to 300ms odd for nearly an hour so something definitely up. No changes on our internal latency and it was across the board on external sites so it's definitely on SB's side. Edited December 15, 2016 by Blue_Cookeh