Internet connections

[Badaz52]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm just on a bit of a fact finding mission to see what Internet connections you guys have, frankly ours is appalling and for the school to think its actually OK to provide this rubbish to the kids is a joke. I've told them countless times that it isn't good enough and explained the reasons why but they don't do anything about it.

 

We are a large secondary school with around 1400 users staff and students and have a 20mbps dedicated leased line. The max capacity of this line is 100mbps at the moment which I still don't think would be good enough but we won't even upgrade to that.

 

Could you tell me:

 

1. Type of instituion (college, primary, secondary)

2. Number of users (students, staff)

3. Speed of your internet connection

4. Type of connection (FTTC, Dedicated Leased line etc.)

5. Rough idea of how much it costs per year (if you know, not essential)

 

Thanks in advance everyone.

[Bionic]

1. Secondary school

2. About 1300 users

3. 100mb theoretical, about 80mb in reality

4. FTTC

5. Not sure of cost

 

[Primus]

1. Secondary school with college

2. About 1300 users

3. 1000mb symmetrical with 80mb backup connection

4. Leased line plus FTTC backup

5. £9600 per year

[6Foot2]

1. Secondary school

2. About 1300 users

3. 100mb uncontested (Actual: Ping: 4 ms, Download: 62.28 Mbps, Upload: 93.76 Mbps: Speedtest.net)

4. Copper to street cabinet

5. Cost:?

[yac2016]

20mb LL connection in a high school is not enough. We have a mix of schools and sizes and I think the cost will be for your firewall and filtering more so the line connection.

 

100mb costs are £250-£300 per month at the moment via BT, but onsite UTM device for a school your size about £2k.

 

1. High School

2. Number of users (1200)

3. 100mb

4. Type of connection - Leased Line

5. £3000 for LL per year and £2k per year for onsite firewall and filtering.

[Linfit]

1. High School

2. 1000 users

3. 100Mb, but there appears to be some headroom as we have monitored up to about 110.

4. Leased line

5. ?

 

We rarely max out the connection but our "base load" as it were is between 15 and 20 MB through most of the day, - we monitor on a screen in our office and it has not gone below 15 since start of school today.

Would agree with you that 20 is way too low for a school that size.

[robyholmes]

1. High School

2. 400 Users

3. 100Mbps Leased Line (Moving to 100Mbps over 1Gbps barrier soon + FTTC backup)

4. Leased Line

5. Around £5,400 a year for the new 100/1000 + FTTC going in soon (36 month term)

 

We're a very rural school so I expect costs to be higher. We're a small school but are wanting to move to cloud storage a lot more. So we're well within the 100Mbps line we have now, but the 1GB barrier we're moving on to allows future expansion without a long wait or extra installation costs.

Edited January 21, 2019 by robyholmes

[Andy2789]

1. Secondary School

2. 1200 Users

3. 100Mbps Lease Line + FTTC Backup

4. Lease Line

5. £5854

[birchanger]

Secondary

About 1400/185

500mb on 1000mb bearer (no backup)

Leased (from LGfL who use VMB but as we're off-network for VMB they subcontract further to BT)

Don't know

[Badaz52]

I'm going to shop around get some other prices, we pay £6.5k for our 20mbps dedicated leased line which includes upstream filtering as well as our own internal smoothwall box and the company wants almost £9k to push us up to 100mbps.

[MikeGreen]

1. Secondary School

2. 1400 Users

3. 100Mbps Lease Line

4. Lease Line

5. about 7k

 

But we are moving to a new 1000Mbps line in the summer for less than 6K we are having a smoothwall fitted today. We are in the north east but I am sure that our new ISP covers the Uk so if you want any details, as i was surprised at how cheap they where, drop me a PM. We use the company for other services so know they are reliable. You could reduce the schools outgoings (this will make them listen) and get a far superior internet connection.

[bashy]

1. Secondary School

2. 1000 Users

3. 1000Mbps Lease Line x2

4. Lease Lines

5. a lot.....

[leegcvcc]

1. Secondary school and POst 16

2. About 1000 users

3. 200mb over a Gb bearer (recently upgraded from 100mb / 100mb bearer)

4. BT Leased line

5. about £7.5k

 

Not been down in 3.5 years now...at all!

[caffrey]

1. Independent

2. 500 users

3. 300Mb 1Gb Bearer with adsl backup (the adsl backup is down more than the leased line!)

4. Lease Line

5. About 7000k

 

Solid for the last 5 years up for renewal this year - maybe shifting to 1000Mb for some reason

[foofighterjim]

1. Secondary

2. 1,200 Users

3. 200MB on a 1GB (Virgin) + Backup (BT)

4. Virgin on Leased Line, Backup is FTTC.

5. For just the lines around £6,000

[Bertie_Dellend]

 

5. About 7000k

 

 

That is not cheap!

[hallb15]

1. Primary

2. 850

3. 300Mb (1000Mb capable)

4. DarkFibre

5. £3600 including upstream content filtering

[RobFuller]

1. Secondary

2. 1600

3. 1Gbps TalkTalk Business & 350Mbps Virgin Media Business Zoom (Backup)

4. £5200pa TTB ,£ 624pa VMB

 

*No filtering included in pricing

[caffrey]

That is not cheap!

 

oops 7k I meant

[howartp]

Secondary inc Sixth Form

1700

Just upgraded to 1Gbps last month

EXA Leased Line

£8,500 pa

 

Bear in mind several suppliers are offering 1Gbps for same/less than 200-300mbps.

 

We won't use more than ~300 to start with, but no brainer to get 1,000 for less than cost of 300.

[Cthulhu]

Sixth Form College

Around 1500 Students and 150 Staff

100Mbps

FTTC

Around £3500

 

Really not enough for what we do. We've had to throttle a lot of traffic and disable Wifi for BYOD in many areas due to the connection maxing out constantly. Migrating to Office365 and the implementation of other cloud services is what caused it. Fingers crossed we'll be getting an upgrade to 1Gbps in the summer.

[Not_so_techy]

Do you guys just go for the cheapest option? I personally buy into the person as well as the company we buy off. Always been big on that as all internet lines are usually owned by OPENREACH and ‘loaned’ to every Tom dick and Harry.

[localzuk]

1. Trust of 6 schools and 3 nurseries.

2. Around 1600 children

3. 250 staff

4a. 1Gbps leased line to internet

4b. 1Gbps PTP fibre links between schools back to the central site (4x Exa (OpenReach) links, 1x a OM4 SWA fibre along a hedge), and 1 wireless link (800Mbps Ubiquiti AirFibre)

5. Around £30,000 a year for the lot. £14.5k pa for the 1Gbps leased line. PTP lines depend on distance from exchange. Price is re-charged based on school roll. A 130 child primary pays £2437.50, vs a 600 pupil middle school paying £11,250.

 

That doesn't include filtering/firewall - that is a separate cost on top.

 

One note on cost - costs vary by area. We are in an expensive, rural, zone, so we pay more than, say, a city for the leased line.

Edited February 6, 2019 by localzuk

[caffrey]

Do you guys just go for the cheapest option? I personally buy into the person as well as the company we buy off. Always been big on that as all internet lines are usually owned by OPENREACH and ‘loaned’ to every Tom dick and Harry.

 

I'd agree, Virgin have been rock solid for me, no complaints at all but their quote for 1Gb was double that of a competitor that is a Virgin reseller

[Badaz52]

Hi everyone,

 

we have just moved over to schools broadband on 1gbps with filtering included. Does anyone know how I can do an accurate speed test as the ones I can do are giving me <100mbps on the result which is worrying.

 

Cheers!