A better ISP? Options?

[tooplanx]

Hello all,

 

Long time reader, but first time poster!

 

I'm a teacher in a primary school but also do a lot of the technical support and advise on ICT decisions.

We currently get our internet through the local authority as well as our Smoothwall proxy / filtering.

 

Unfortunately our internet is diabolically slow (4MB/s - 8MB/s for the whole school...). From what a governor has told me, it is also extremley expensive (£1000s).

 

Is there anything stopping us from moving to a normal consumer ISP such as Virgin and getting Fibre / Cable with speeds of 60-100MB/s?

 

I assume we would lose access to our proxy/filtering, but can this easily be replaced through other options?

 

Thanks for your help!

Edited June 21, 2018 by tooplanx

[Katy]

You could move to a "normal" ISP's business product and probably save a fortune, although you'd then need to pay for filtering which can be expensive depending on the size of the school (we pay about £2000/year for our filtering). Alternatively there are some providers like Schools Broadband which offer similar to the LA where they do the filtering for you, not sure if they offer it over cheap connections like FTTC though.

 

Also depends how rubbish your current connection is - you should be able to get 100Mbps leased line at a reasonable rate (we pay about £5,000/year for ours)

[sparkeh]

I would advise you have a serious think about moving to a consumer broadband offering as it probably won't fit your needs.

 

For starters:

1) Yes you may get higher advertised speeds but home broadband is designed for a small amounts of devices. How many devices do you have? Try running them all through the router you get with a home connection and you will struggle. Proper connection means proper equipment.

2) SLA: if you get a proper connection, part of what you are paying for is guaranteed uptime and fix time. If this is broken, depending on the agreement, you could get a refund. Otherwise its a 'fixed when its fixed' deal.

3) Support, if you have a problem you will have to ring the consumer support line. Imagine calling the Virgin/BT/Sky consumer line when your connection goes down.

 

I am not entirely sure that a company will install a home connection to a school these days?

Edited June 21, 2018 by sparkeh

[elsiegee40]

Hello all,

 

Long time reader, but first time poster!

 

I'm a teacher in a primary school but also do a lot of the technical support and advise on ICT decisions.

We currently get our internet through the local authority as well as our Smoothwall proxy / filtering.

 

Unfortunately our internet is diabolically slow (4MB/s - 8MB/s for the whole school...). From what a governor has told me, it is also extremley expensive (£1000s).

Your school business manager - and network manager - can shop round round for better business desks, but...

Is there anything stopping us from moving to a normal consumer ISP such as Virgin and getting Fibre / Cable with speeds of 60-100MB/s?

The equipment you get from them is designed for home use for a small number of users simultaneously. If it goes down, the support for its restoration will be lower... business deals are set up around businesses not functioning when the line fails and will get a faster response.

 

Many of the home internet providers will not supply to business anyway. They’ll direct you to their business option.

 

I assume we would lose access to our proxy/filtering, but can this easily be replaced through other options?

If filtering and firewall are part of the bundle then yes you will lose them. Suitable alternatives like Smoothwall don’t come cheap and if the cost of your current deal seems high then it’s probably that your package doesn’t only include the broadband line.

 

Buying separately may get you a faster line, but it won’t necessarily make the total price any cheaper.

 

That said, at my last school we dumped RM with bundled filtering and went for a BT business package and a separate Smoothwall contract. It wasn’t any cheaper, but the speed improvement was more than worth it.

Edited June 21, 2018 by elsiegee40

[tooplanx]

Thanks for that. Is there a reason we couldn't just use a standard package rather than a business package? Is it because of IP limits, bandwidth, or network feature limitations (or all of the above!)?

 

 

Our school is only 150 pupils with around 20 teaching staff. The £5000 you pay a year - how big is your school? And how does that scale down depending on size? (ie. do you think a small school would be a lot cheaper than that?)

 

 

Thanks again

 

################## EDIT ##################

 

 

That reply was towards Katy,

 

 

I now see that others have replied and it looks like some of those replies tackle the questions I put in this post. Thanks!

Edited June 21, 2018 by tooplanx
Updated to be clearer

[Katy]

Thanks for that. Is there a reason we couldn't just use a standard package rather than a business package? Is it because of IP limits, bandwidth, or network feature limitations (or all of the above!)?

 

 

Our school is only 150 pupils with around 20 teaching staff. The £5000 you pay a year - how big is your school? And how does that scale down depending on size? (ie. do you think a small school would be a lot cheaper than that?)

 

 

Thanks again

We're about 700 pupils, the price is for the connection type and speed so not based on pupil count (the filtering is usually licenced per user though so does scale with school size), but that was just as an illustration (as you said you're currently spending thousands a year on something very slow) as to what a 100Mbps up and 100Mbps down fibre leased line might cost (guaranteed bandwidth etc and comes with a decent Cisco router).

 

For the size of the school you could probably get away with a business level FTTC, think we pay £37 a month for our FTTC line (which runs as backup incase the fibre drops), we get about 70Mbps down (20Mbps up) on that as we're very close to the roadside cabinet but again you'd need filtering on top.

[tooplanx]

Thank you all for your advise.

 

You have given me many things to think about that I hadn't fully considered before!

 

So in terms of specific school broadband providers, who are the main players? Anyone have any recommendations?

 

As I say, we're a pretty small school (150 pupils) but we have recently become part of a multi academy trust and so will function with two other school with a total of I guess around 1000 pupils between the three, so could perhaps share a filtering service?

[Katy]

Thank you all for your advise.

 

You have given me many things to think about that I hadn't fully considered before!

 

So in terms of specific school broadband providers, who are the main players? Anyone have any recommendations?

 

As I say, we're a pretty small school (150 pupils) but we have recently become part of a multi academy trust and so will function with two other school with a total of I guess around 1000 pupils between the three, so could perhaps share a filtering service?

 

Hopefully you will have somebody in your trust who will be able to sort all this out for you - if you've got 1000 pupils between you there should be some decent IT staffing in place I'd have thought.

@SchoolsBroadband obviously target schools and can provide combined connectivity and filtering, I can't recommend or otherwise as I've never used them.

 

We use Lloyds IP (who are not school specific but business specific) for our connection and phones, and we have a Smoothwall virtual appliance on site to take care of the Internet filtering.

[Blue_Cookeh]

If I were to do it all again this time I'd get a straight Internet connection and do filtering on site ourselves again.

 

Zen Internet, Exa Networks would be my first port of call. Do filtering on site with Sophos XG or Palo Alto.

 

In the case of a MAT I'd look at the largest school (or the one with the best connection available) doing core routing and then the smaller schools connecting back to the main school for their filtering/Internet access to reduce cost.

[tooplanx]

We're about 700 pupils, the price is for the connection type and speed so not based on pupil count (the filtering is usually licenced per user though so does scale with school size), but that was just as an illustration (as you said you're currently spending thousands a year on something very slow) as to what a 100Mbps up and 100Mbps down fibre leased line might cost (guaranteed bandwidth etc and comes with a decent Cisco router).

 

For the size of the school you could probably get away with a business level FTTC, think we pay £37 a month for our FTTC line (which runs as backup incase the fibre drops), we get about 70Mbps down (20Mbps up) on that as we're very close to the roadside cabinet but again you'd need filtering on top.

 

 

That business FTTC would probably be more than adequate! As part of an academy we could probably share a filtering service to reduce the cost (?) Do you know who supplies your back up FTTC connection?

 

Unfortunately, we're one of those schools that needs to have fund raising days just to buy some new glue-sticks!

[Katy]

That business FTTC would probably be more than adequate! As part of an academy we could probably share a filtering service to reduce the cost (?) Do you know who supplies your back up FTTC connection?

 

Unfortunately, we're one of those schools that needs to have fund raising days just to buy some new glue-sticks!

 

No idea on shared filtering, unless the rest of the trust is using a cloud based system you'd need VPN linking each site and to run all your traffic through another school. We used to do it with our trust but it was slow and unreliable. We get all our connections from Lloyds IP. https://www.lloyds-ip.co.uk/

 

Should mention the £37 I pay is actually £48 as FTTC requires a phone line to run on, so line rental pushes the price up.

[tooplanx]

Hopefully you will have somebody in your trust who will be able to sort all this out for you - if you've got 1000 pupils between you there should be some decent IT staffing in place I'd have thought.

 

You'd have thought, right? I'm not 100% sure but I feel like I'm the closest thing we have. Our own school got rid of county IT support and use a private company now, but the're pretty useless - I pretty much have to explain to them what is wrong and how they should try to fix it... I think the other two schools are in, or heading towards a similar situation.

 

In schools there seems to be a massive disconnect between the needs of a school, the understanding of school staff, and the understanding of IT profs as to what is actually useful to schools...

[gpjt]

I'd recommend https://exa.education/ heard nothing but good things about them.

[epoch_roots]

I'd recommend https://exa.education/ heard nothing but good things about them.

 

Have you actually used them, though?

[gpjt]

Not yet you?

[synaesthesia]

You'd have thought, right? I'm not 100% sure but I feel like I'm the closest thing we have. Our own school got rid of county IT support and use a private company now, but the're pretty useless - I pretty much have to explain to them what is wrong and how they should try to fix it... I think the other two schools are in, or heading towards a similar situation.

 

In schools there seems to be a massive disconnect between the needs of a school, the understanding of school staff, and the understanding of IT profs as to what is actually useful to schools...

 

True, and you should be in a position where your IT support are able to advise you strongly on what is possible, what is feasible and what is best for the needs of the school.

As has been said before, avoid any home connection period, regardless of how fast it is. You don't want reliability issues falling on you when the average fix time maybe a couple of weeks.

Business lines are more than suitable but of course it's security where your priority will need to be. The majority of these will provide you a line and router and little else, leaving all security (firewall), routing, filtering down to you.

Education specific packages will be more suited as they come packaged all-in, if that's what you want. You do however mention having the possibility of a shared filtering package. So perhaps you can anticipate and plan for this appropriately, for instance having a supplier provide you a line with specifications you see fit and router, and see if there's an option for a filter whether it's hosted by them or by you that can be used immediately but replaced further down the line. Plenty of providers should be flexible regarding this. Likewise we've heard many good things about Exa, but definitely worth speaking to @Wave9_Lee regarding the flexibility.

You don't want to find yourself in the position where you're waiting for the filtering/security side to come in at a later date otherwise you're risking safeguarding, child protection, school data massively and OFSTED will hammer you for it should they come in.

[Andycat]

We're with BT Global, 1gig uncontended so a bit more than you need but we've previously used Exa for a backup line that was solid and good value, that included filtering.

[epoch_roots]

Not yet http://awscdn.cdngeek.com/images/smilies/smilies/eyebrows.gif you?

 

 

Yeah, I've made my opinion clear in other posts so don't want to appear to be beating a dead horse. I'm just surprised someone would want to recommend a service they haven't used before.

 

Edited June 21, 2018 by epoch_roots

[mikkydoos]

I would say realistically you have 3 options: Business broadband, FTTC, leased line.

 

Leased line will incur a minimum 3 year contract - price dependant on speed (Our 50mbps is approx 1800/annum over a contracted 3 years plus a £500 (ish) setup/installation charge) = Guaranteed uncontended (not shared) bandwidth = guaranteed upload and download speed fixed at 50mbps.

 

FTTC is slightly different - price dependant on package. All quoted speeds are UP TO x mbps but with a (usually) guaranteed minimum = Guaranteed contended minimum download and upload speed.

 

Business broadband - The same you get at home but with less contended use.

 

* Contended = Quoted bandwidth is not guaranteed because the total bandwidth allocion for your area is shared between subscribing customers/networks - e.g. if the whole area is on the net at the same time... your speed will suffer.

 

 

A good economical firewall/filtering option is to choose an ISP that offers cloud hosted filtering such as Sophos Web Gateway.

 

Popular ISP choices for education are Exa, Wave 9, Zen and there are others. They are all BT/Virgin (and others) resellers. All of them will be able to provide you with everything you need. Call and get a rep to visit. They will set you straight.

 

 

Bear this in mind - For some reason (in my experience) BT and Virgin resellers always seem to offer much better prices, service and support than the originating IPS's themselves. !?!

[tooplanx]

Thank you. This is all great info!

[Norphy]

One thing to bear in mind is that there may (just may) be a reason why your connection is so pants. It might not be possible to get a faster connection that what you've got at the moment because of where your school is located. If you decide to get a connection with a commercial ISP, you might get charged for installation by OpenReach or Virgin which could well bump up the cost.

 

Do you know how your school is connected to the internet at the mo?

[synaesthesia]

Another possible option; how far away are you from your nearest secondary in your chain? Any chance of line-of-sight? May have extra benefits (shared resources etc) as well as piggybacking onto their internet, filtering, security etc; lots of long range wireless connectivity options also available.

[mrwoberts]

+1 for Zen - excellent UK business.

 

We ditched the LA recommended ISP - BT Unicorn (Global). Speeds and lack of control were crippling us.

 

Moved the line to Zen FTTC Unlimited Office (includes Critical Care). £ 912 per year, includes line rental.

Purchased a Public Sector license of Untangle, which is a license for up to 150 unique devices. £ 1,000 per year.

Installed Untangle on some half-decent kit we already owned.

 

With this new setup we are so much happier than we've ever been. Filtering, Monitoring and granular controls really satisfy the Leadership.

 

-- EDIT

 

School has 210 children, 30 staff

Advertised speeds for our FTTC line, 76 down, 19 up

Download speeds regularly above 60 Mbps.

Upload speeds regularly above 15 Mbps

Edited June 22, 2018 by mrwoberts

[mikkydoos]

@mrwoberts Untangle doesn't filter though does it ?

[mrwoberts]

@mrwoberts Untangle doesn't filter though does it ?

 

It sure does, in a most excellent way (said in my best Bill and Ted voice)

 

Take a look at the live demo...

Untangle