Renewal time for our leased line

[mikkydoos]

Had a demo last week of Sophos UTM. Looks awesome. Bit pricey tho compared to Smooth' - who I beat the rep into submission and got a grand off the price! 6K For 4 years too.

[mikkydoos]

.... and now its £5500 for 4 years after beating the rep up on the phone.

 

Slightly happier days.

[AlanD]

Now that "broadband" asynchronous connections are so much faster - you can get 200Mb/s or even 300Mb/s from virgin for a fraction of the cost of a leased line. Even FTTC with 76MB/s download and 20Mb/s upload would probably be faster - and certainly cheaper than a leased line. Have you actually looked at your traffic graphs? Even though we host several onsite servers, and make use of Office 365 and Googole Docs our school stays well inside what can be delivered by an Async service. And there is almost no evidence of contention that can be noticed during the day time (...yes its 10% or even a bit slower during the evenings). With FTTP on the horizon as well - I think the days for needing leased lines are over.

[mikkydoos]

Now that "broadband" asynchronous connections are so much faster - you can get 200Mb/s or even 300Mb/s from virgin for a fraction of the cost of a leased line. Even FTTC with 76MB/s download and 20Mb/s upload would probably be faster - and certainly cheaper than a leased line. Have you actually looked at your traffic graphs? Even though we host several onsite servers, and make use of Office 365 and Googole Docs our school stays well inside what can be delivered by an Async service. And there is almost no evidence of contention that can be noticed during the day time (...yes its 10% or even a bit slower during the evenings). With FTTP on the horizon as well - I think the days for needing leased lines are over.

 

I agree in part @AlanD. It depends where you are. However, for me the bandwidth guarantee a leased line brings is more necessary than not. Its nearly there, but not quite.

[colly72]

The other thing to bear in mind with leased lines is the service level, which standard asynchronous lines may not offer. For example, we had an issue a year or so ago, where a contractor to the water board, dug through our leased line cable, just outside the school on Saturday morning. By Sunday evening, the line had been repaired and was back up and running. Sometimes, you get what you pay for.

[Michael]

I have to agree with Colly - you won't get the same 99.999% Service Level and with a lot of services going cloud, your upload will make a big difference.

 

Of course the other advantage of a lease line is that you can rapidly increase the speed to 500Mb/s+ very easily. Using any form of copper - BT Infinity or other and you're stuffed.

[Michael]

Of course other considerations with Lease Lines and Point to Point, is they can be used for multiple services, such as VOIP, CCTV, Door Systems, so they all eat up bandwidth.

 

If you add up all the line rentals coming into your building per year, you'll see it makes sense to channel that money elsewhere.

[MYK-IT]

.... and now its £5500 for 4 years after beating the rep up on the phone.

 

Slightly happier days.

 

Sorry to hijack the discussion away from ISP (but i would recommend The Networking People, if they can cover your area!) but what is included with that Sophos UTM package @mikkydoos? How many users/devices etc? Does its other (at least) same functionality as Smoothwall UTM? (Firewall, Routing, Filtering, Safeguarding reporting, DHCP, VPN etc etc). This, and Sonicwall are alternatives I am currently looking in to (in addition to our existing Smoothwall UTM) in respect of it being due for renewal later on in the year.

 

Thanks.

Edited January 23, 2017 by MYK-IT

[mikkydoos]

@MYK-IT Yes it does. It looks really good.

 

Get a demo if you can I'd say. Sophos looked pretty similar in functionality but the user interface was a lot more friendly. Features are quite nicely categorised in the UI e.g. BYOD, filtering etc etc.

I was only quoted the option of hardware which tipped the cost over Smoothwall.

 

I went for the Smoothwall renewal in the end because the cost savings weren't worth the hassle to switch - I've invested a lot of time in S'wall and I don't have the time or inclination to re-learn something else that does pretty much the same job.

 

I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that Smoothwall is still based on PfSense (linux firewall) but modded.. or at least the firewall aspect. I looked at doing that myself too but too daunting !

 

EDIT: Oh! Sophos's safeguarding reporting looked a lot better to me... from the little I saw of it.

Edited January 23, 2017 by mikkydoos

[MYK-IT]

Thanks @mikkydoos

 

Yes, I have similar thoughts about if we have to move away from Smoothwall; especially after having it in place for the past 6 years, or so. Although I have to research and check out the alternatives; especially if savings (and/or better features) are available. Just concerned with recent talk on the forums about how Smoothwall renewal costs have rocketed etc, and especially after seeing the FastVue reporting on Sonicwall (in respect of (Safeguarding) reporting) highlighted how the interface and options on Smoothwall could do with a refresh. Hopefully, I will see these, and other alternatives at BETT later this week.

[localzuk]

One thing to note - Sophos are very keen with their pricing at the moment. If you talk to them, they will undoubtedly be able to include configuration days to configure a UTM to your liking. They threw in 2 days onsite engineer time for me when I bought from them.

[MYK-IT]

One thing to note - Sophos are very keen with their pricing at the moment. If you talk to them, they will undoubtedly be able to include configuration days to configure a UTM to your liking. They threw in 2 days onsite engineer time for me when I bought from them.

 

I assume you have, and use SOPHOS UTM then @localzuk? We currently use SOPHOS Enterprise for AV etc. not sure if that would help further with being existing customer???

 

Did you deal direct with Sophos or via a reseller?

 

Thanks.

[localzuk]

I assume you have, and use SOPHOS UTM then @localzuk? We currently use SOPHOS Enterprise for AV etc. not sure if that would help further with being existing customer???

Did you deal direct with Sophos or via a reseller?

Thanks.

Yup, we have 5 of them in our schools. I dealt with Softcat as the reseller, who set up web demos, phone conferences etc... to discuss what I needed.

[Opendium_Steve]

I have to agree with Colly - you won't get the same 99.999% Service Level and with a lot of services going cloud, your upload will make a big difference.

 

Of course the other advantage of a lease line is that you can rapidly increase the speed to 500Mb/s+ very easily. Using any form of copper - BT Infinity or other and you're stuffed.

 

Just to chuck in my 2p's worth, I'm never convinced that "99.999%" service levels are worth the paper they're written on. Most outages that last more than a few minutes are of the "digger through fibre" variety, and they affect everyone to the same degree, no matter what your SLA says. Any compensation written into the SLA for breaching the service level is usually an absolute pittance and not worth worrying about.

[mikkydoos]

Apart from the 100% uptime SLA I've had with a secondary ADSL line.

[Opendium_Steve]

Apart from the 100% uptime SLA I've had with a secondary ADSL line.

 

Who's doing ADSL with an SLA guaranteeing 100% uptime? Openreach don't do a 100% uptime product...

[mikkydoos]

Who's doing ADSL with an SLA guaranteeing 100% uptime? Openreach don't do a 100% uptime product...

 

Not saying who it is cos I havent advised tenders who's won yet.

 

Leased line fibre with backup ADSL in the event of failure is what it is.

[Michael]

Not saying who it is cos I havent advised tenders who's won yet.

 

Leased line fibre with backup ADSL in the event of failure is what it is.

 

Wouldn't you still need to transfer IPs over, which in effect is some down time. I mean from your lease to your DSL line?

[mikkydoos]

Wouldn't you still need to transfer IPs over, which in effect is some down time. I mean from your lease to your DSL line?

 

Not using any fixed in house at present. Should be fine for web access.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi there, we include configuration and ongoing changes/management in our charges for Sophos UTM. Many of our customers take the service and gradually take on more of their own changes, with our support over the early months. To be fair, it's a very user friendly interface. If you're looking for a demo/walkthrough, I'd be happy to arrange this,

 

cheers

 

Lee

[AlanD]

I may have misunderstood - but the guarantee of service level merely means that you get a service call support out to you in 4 hours or less. There is no guarantee of a service - as such. And if the diggers rip up your fibre by mistake it can and will be weeks before you get your service back. So, there is no guarantee of actually getting internet - only a guarantee of getting support for your outage. You can pay for such support for broadband business connections too.

 

I hear everyone talking about how much fast upload speed WILL be with leased lines...and potentially it is. However- I strongly recommend that you look at your bandwidth usage. Even BT fibre broadband (business) offers 20Mb/s upload - and despite hosting webservers - and using cloud service like Google docs and MS 365 - we come no where near to that...and see little evidence of contention duing the daytime...and only a 10% or so hit in evenings.

 

I think many schools bought leased lines wihen broadband was only 2Mb/s, or "up to 8Mb/s". These days FTTC and Virgins DOCIM broadband services offer speeds of yo ti 300Mb/s for download and you would probably save thousands of pounds per year. Don't take my workd for it.....look at at band width usage....and make an informed decision.

[localzuk]

I may have misunderstood - but the guarantee of service level merely means that you get a service call support out to you in 4 hours or less. There is no guarantee of a service - as such. And if the diggers rip up your fibre by mistake it can and will be weeks before you get your service back. So, there is no guarantee of actually getting internet - only a guarantee of getting support for your outage. You can pay for such support for broadband business connections too.

I hear everyone talking about how much fast upload speed WILL be with leased lines...and potentially it is. However- I strongly recommend that you look at your bandwidth usage. Even BT fibre broadband (business) offers 20Mb/s upload - and despite hosting webservers - and using cloud service like Google docs and MS 365 - we come no where near to that...and see little evidence of contention duing the daytime...and only a 10% or so hit in evenings.

I think many schools bought leased lines wihen broadband was only 2Mb/s, or "up to 8Mb/s". These days FTTC and Virgins DOCIM broadband services offer speeds of yo ti 300Mb/s for download and you would probably save thousands of pounds per year. Don't take my workd for it.....look at at band width usage....and make an informed decision.

 

Indeed, you really should look at what you actually need before purchasing a costly leased line. If you are going to be operating a WAN across larger schools (as a MAT, for example), then a leased line is a no-brainer. However, if you are just going to be getting internet access, then FTTC is often going to be a good choice. All our primaries (all small), have FTTC now instead of a leased line. Saves us £6k per year per school.

 

However, contention is an important thing to consider. If you haven't got 1:1 on your line, then you are simply not guaranteed to get the speeds you may need. So, when it comes to a busy time of year (eg. World Cup coverage or whatever), you end up seeing your internet almost useless as everyone else is using it up.

 

Also, an SLA is not a guarentee of service call - that is quite simply wrong. We pay for 99.99blah (can't remember exact number of 9s) SLA on our leased line. This means we get money back if it falls below that level. We also have a backup FTTC line, which has BT's standard SLA on.

Edited January 24, 2017 by localzuk

[AlanD]

No - contention does not make the line useless - but I agree it takes a hit (and its pretty rare for us to nocice anything) ....but then so does £6 a year! Our 200Mb/s broadband service has dropped to 100Mb/s at such a time - but its still 100Mb/s despite that contention.

[localzuk]

No - contention does not make the line useless - but I agree it takes a hit (and its pretty rare for us to nocice anything) ....but then so does £6 a year! Our 200Mb/s broadband service has dropped to 100Mb/s at such a time - but its still 100Mb/s despite that contention.

The problem is, you're seeing it as it is now. What happens when your ISP oversells in your area, and you end up getting much lower speeds? You don't have any way to complain - you're getting the contended service you're paying for.

 

It means that at short notice, you may not be able to provide the services needed to your school. You just don't know if it'll be at full speed or not.

[SchoolsBroadband]

That's just capacity planning from the ISP and that shouldn't happen.

 

Leased lines should come with those guarantees and do from the carriers. Touch wood so far the only speed issues we've had from carriers is where they've provisioned it wrong at a lower speed than they should have.

 

When using standard FTTC or a Virgin Media Cable modem always look at the traffic shaping policies. Never trust the word "uncongested" when talking about FTTC as this is just marketing spin as the technology does not give any guaranteed speeds unless it's EoFTTC.

 

Dave