Schools Broadband - Anyone else having Internet issues today?

[IrritableTech]

Not even a fair comparison.. my school budget doesn’t come close to what schools broadband are making..

 

If you are charging for a service.. then you provide sed service..

 

Or at least don’t make claims that are just not true!

 

If I had the income they had.. I’m sure I would have failover switches and more nodes for my hyper v environment..

 

 

I’ll give it to them , they were hit at notifying people! But the track record speaks for itself.. I have requested an true % of uptime from support so that I can compare this to what we signed up for!

 

Irrespective of profit margins, if we demand more redundancy we can expect to pay more service charge. If someone can promise more reliability and cheaper prices then they’ll win contracts and only time will tell if they prove better value and provide a higher service level.

 

Even when talking about contracts with public services profit isn’t a dirty word. We pay considerably less now than with our LEA provider of old, and it’s far more reliable. The LEA ‘profits’ were fed back into the system to fund improvements and development - none of which was evident to us then or now.

[synaesthesia]

You can make redundant equipment redundant infinitely, sometimes it's just not going to help and costs will naturally spiral as a result. There are failures in the redundancy systems which have already been highlighted, such as making sure that future backup lines put in go through separate infrastructures, routers, filters etc. Only so much they can do.

[FN-GM]

All but one of our schools are on another provider. The service is more redundant, quicker and cheaper.

 

Schools broadband is expensive, not cheap. As a result they should have redundant systems.

[Edu-IT]

All but one of our schools are on another provider. The service is more redundant, quicker and cheaper.

 

Schools broadband is expensive, not cheap. As a result they should have redundant systems.

What do you know, that we don’t, to suggest that they have less redundancy than any other provider?

 

Lets challenge these uninformed judgements head on to get to the facts.

[ChrisC]

I think every supplier has pros and cons, be it service or cost etc. Also it's safe to say that they all have issues at some point (even if they're issues that you wouldn't necessarily notice). Things will always get heated and frustrations will be aired when there's an issue with something as important as your internet connection but without knowing the precise workings of each supplier we can't make assumptions to the resources put in place in terms of staffing, hardware or financial resources. What you can only hope is that your supplier learns from issues and use that experience to mitigate it happening again (which I know doesn't always happen in practise). At least there is usually a choice of suppliers if the solution offered or service is unacceptable for your establishment.

[FN-GM]

What do you know, that we don’t, to suggest that they have less redundancy than any other provider?

 

Lets challenge these uninformed judgements head on to get to the facts.

What do you know to make a claim that I am uninformed????

[Edu-IT]

What do you know to make a claim that I am uninformed????

Your post added no evidence to support the points raised? So I am asking what it is you know, that a lot of others perhaps don’t, about their infrastructure and redundancy? Genuine question.

 

The comment about uninformed comments was a general statement where things have been said - not necessarily by you - without any supporting evidence.

[Blue_Cookeh]

I mean, if we're going to look at cold numbers our business line from KCOM (Eclipse Internet) that we use for SIP/VPN etc has had no noticeable downtime over the last two years... I don't believe SchoolsBroadband is sitting at anywhere near 99% over the last two years for our school, redundancy or not.

 

I've had an incredibly competitive quote from Zen Internet, so far.

[Primus]

I mean, if we're going to look at cold numbers our business line from KCOM (Eclipse Internet) that we use for SIP/VPN etc has had no noticeable downtime over the last two years... I don't believe SchoolsBroadband is sitting at anywhere near 99% over the last two years for our school, redundancy or not.

 

I've had an incredibly competitive quote from Zen Internet, so far.

 

Agreed let's see their facts, they won't hold up to scrutiny and something very odd is going on here with posters who see SB can do no wrong despite their huge issues.

[Edu-IT]

Agreed let's see their facts, they won't hold up to scrutiny and something very odd is going on here with posters who see SB can do no wrong despite their huge issues.

If that was aimed at me, I am not for one moment suggesting all is golden. What I am saying is jumping on the bandwagon making sweeping statements everytime something goes wrong, without any supporting evidence, isn’t helpful to anyone. If people know there are redundancy issues, for example, and can demonstrate hard facts on how/why then this will help everyone make informed decisions.

[FN-GM]

Your post added no evidence to support the points raised? So I am asking what it is you know, that a lot of others perhaps don’t, about their infrastructure and redundancy? Genuine question.

 

The comment about uninformed comments was a general statement where things have been said - not necessarily by you - without any supporting evidence.

 

Just because there is no evidence in the post doesn't mean I am randomly guessing. We are not in a court of law here where I need to provide exhibits for each of my statements.

 

My source of information is from an employee of the company. I won't say anything more than that, I don't want them to be in trouble.

 

I don't understand by people defend them. The downtime has been a regular occurrence for years. It is not a one off. That is not acceptable. I know of one LA who is advising all their primary schools to pull out when the contract is up this year.

Edited February 7, 2018 by FN-GM

[synaesthesia]

Let's chill this out a bit. Some folks will be happy to accept the issues as part and parcel, some won't. I feel terrible for SB because I've wanted them to succeed since the dissolution of EMBC as it was, but at the same time need to look after the best interests of the school and it's patrons. We're not happy, we're moving to a provider with a good reputation for service & reliability. I do feel however that poor Dave at SB is having to spend an inordinate amount of time fighting PR fires, whether it's people squabbling over reliability or 3rd party suppliers sticking their oar in when professionalism suggests that's not a wise move. He should be able to put all his efforts into finding resolutions with his staff. I'll be the first to say he's a good salesman so PR should be right up his alley but he knows where efforts need to be concentrated, as do all his technical leads and engineers. All I can do is hope they improve for the sake of their remaining and incoming customers.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Salesman! That hurts!

 

I'll reply properly to all later today. Just having a board meeting.

 

Dave

[synaesthesia]

You've got the gift of the gab, don't deny it!

[nikaso]

I second this..I’m sorry, but I feel we are now at s point where we just compare the outages against each other! “Well it isn’t as bad as the one last month”

The website states 99% uptime does it not? I think the 12 seconds per term is mentioned somewhere!

 

I struggle to believe that a “major ISP” would have a outage like this.. with one hardware failure!

 

Well 99% uptime actually equates to a DAILY outage of 14 minutes according to uptime.is

[Fazza]

Well 99% uptime actually equates to a DAILY outage of 14 minutes according to uptime.is

 

Doing a quick calculation - 14 minutes a day equates to approx 2.36 days.

[nikaso]

Doing a quick calculation - 14 minutes a day equates to approx 2.36 days.

 

Are you assuming core hours uptime? I think uptime.is assumes 24/7 uptime.

[Fazza]

Are you assuming core hours uptime? I think uptime.is assumes 24/7 uptime.

 

Nope, I assumed 14 minutes per day x 365 days - I can't remember the calculation now!! (shouldve used Excel and saved it).

 

My point was that 1% is a lot longer than people think! It's a matter of a few days a year.

[Edu-IT]

Just because there is no evidence in the post doesn't mean I am randomly guessing. We are not in a court of law here where I need to provide exhibits for each of my statements.

 

My source of information is from an employee of the company. I won't say anything more than that, I don't want them to be in trouble.

 

I don't understand by people defend them. The downtime has been a regular occurrence for years. It is not a one off. That is not acceptable. I know of one LA who is advising all their primary schools to pull out when the contract is up this year.

Indeed we're not but at the same time, your posts would be more useful to schools considering their options if they were supported with some proof, rather than them appearing to be just bashing because there's another opportunity to do so.

 

There's a difference between defending and wanting to know true facts to make an informed decision.

 

You could have easily said you have information from an internal source in your original post, you just chose not to, which is why I asked about what you knew and we're at this point.

[FN-GM]

Indeed we're not but at the same time, your posts would be more useful to schools considering their options if they were supported with some proof, rather than them appearing to be just bashing because there's another opportunity to do so.

 

It is completely relevant to the post.

[nikaso]

Nope, I assumed 14 minutes per day x 365 days - I can't remember the calculation now!! (shouldve used Excel and saved it).

 

My point was that 1% is a lot longer than people think! It's a matter of a few days a year.

 

The way uptime.is work it out is ....

 

Minutes in a day = 24 * 60 = 1440

 

1% of 1440 is 1440/100 = 14.4 minutes per day downtime.

 

The point is the same, 99% uptime is actually not great at all. I know some other ISPs guarantee 99.99% uptime (SLA dependant of course).

[Fazza]

The way uptime.is work it out is ....

 

Minutes in a day = 24 * 60 = 1440

 

1% of 1440 is 1440/100 = 14.4 minutes per day downtime.

 

The point is the same, 99% uptime is actually not great at all. I know some other ISPs guarantee 99.99% uptime (SLA dependant of course).

 

Using Excel this time!

 

14.4 minutes a day = 5256 minutes in a year (assuming there are 365 days in a year)

That's 87.6 hours of downtime before they are in breach of their 99% uptime. So unless you've have way over 87.6 hours in total down time then you can't really complain as thats what you agreed to when you signed the contract. If it was 99.99% then it'd be a completely different kettle of fish.

 

The point you and have been trying to make is that 99% sounds better than some people may think so using my figures above if you have 40 hours of downtime and it all happened to occurring just during working hours and was OK in the evening then potentially you could have 2 weeks of downtime and still be within 99% availability!

[Blue_Cookeh]

Using Excel this time!

 

14.4 minutes a day = 5256 minutes in a year (assuming there are 365 days in a year)

That's 87.6 hours of downtime before they are in breach of their 99% uptime. So unless you've have way over 87.6 hours in total down time then you can't really complain as thats what you agreed to when you signed the contract. If it was 99.99% then it'd be a completely different kettle of fish.

 

The point you and have been trying to make is that 99% sounds better than some people may think so using my figures above if you have 40 hours of downtime and it all happened to occurring just during working hours and was OK in the evening then potentially you could have 2 weeks of downtime and still be within 99% availability!

 

From a school's point of view, let's assume 87.6 hours downtime happened during the school day over the course of a year. Our finance ladies rely on RM Finance, which is a cloud-only product, so they've lost 87.6 hours worth of work.

 

Even at minimum wage (which none of our staff are) thats £657 per staff member lost.

 

This might sound ridiculous, and maybe there hasn't been 87 hours worth of downtime during the school day, but you can see how quickly the monetary value in hours gets lost once you start multiplying it by multiple members of staff, particularly as we rely on Office365, Integris, RM Finance etc etc which are all cloud based now. This doesn't even take into account the learning lost with our pupils.

 

I have to admit I'm a bit peeved about our Netsweeper migration too - I was offered an after school slot two weeks ago, but apparently BETT/lack of resource put a halt on that and now I'm stuck having to accept another hour to two hour's worth of downtime at either 8am or 1pm - during the school day. We (partly) went with SchoolsBroadband because we thought they would understand the needs of a typical school, and that they were using Lightspeed filtering - neither are the case anymore.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Blue_Cookeh

[Bob_the_Goon]

We seem to be offline again. Anyone else offline?

[Bob_the_Goon]

It's apparently a Lightspeed issue on filter 11