Speed for secondary school

[Jawloms]

Currently sitting on a 35mb Internet connection, 675 pupils. It actually copes surprisingly well! Got a price in May to upgrade to 100mb leased line and it would mean a £2k pa increase. I've now got to a place where I think we should do it and have justified the cost increase, gone back to my provider to be told there has been some re-zoning and now it's a £3k increase pa. Harder to justify.........

[SchoolsBroadband]

We now mostly sell full 1Gbit circuits to secondary schools as the price difference is now very minimal between a 300Mbit and a 1Gbit.

 

If you'd like a quote do let me know

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Jawloms]

If you'd like a quote do let me know

 

Thanks but it's you who I was referring too

[SchoolsBroadband]

Thanks but it's you who I was referring too

 

ha!

 

I must admit it is annoying when Talk Talk do some re-zoning. It's normally to the benefit of schools and prices reduce, not the other way around but can be in specific circumstances.

 

Can you send me a PM and I'll take a look for your personally?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[MartinT]

I've just been quoted £508/mo (inc VAT) for an upgrade from 300Mbps to 1Gbps. This is quite a lot less than we were paying before on a 36 month contract (2 1/2 years in). Since we are moving heavily to cloud storage and services now is the time to get the line uprated, so I'll kick off the approval process shortly.

[localzuk]

Wow. This is going to be expensive. We currently use 60% of a 100mb/1gb leased line.

Compare the cost of higher speed internet with the cost of replacing servers and running them. The link becomes a cheaper component of it all we found,

 

We have 1Gbit shared between our schools (which works out around 1500 children). We rarely use more than 200Mbit on it, but the difference in price between 200Mbit and 1Gbit was so small as to make it silly not to go the full speed. However, we are starting to roll out 1:1 Chromebooks shortly, so our concurrent users will go from about 300 usually up to about 600, then adding 300 each year for the next 3 years, so we'll see how it copes!

[PotNoodleTech]

Compare the cost of higher speed internet with the cost of replacing servers and running them. The link becomes a cheaper component of it all we found,

 

We have 1Gbit shared between our schools (which works out around 1500 children). We rarely use more than 200Mbit on it, but the difference in price between 200Mbit and 1Gbit was so small as to make it silly not to go the full speed. However, we are starting to roll out 1:1 Chromebooks shortly, so our concurrent users will go from about 300 usually up to about 600, then adding 300 each year for the next 3 years, so we'll see how it copes!

 

Yes it is the incessant need for more equipment that is the problem. Gone from 500 devices to 1000 in the last 3 years (300+ of them chromebooks).

 

Don't forget, chromebooks do literally everything via the internet, they don't use your on site servers at all - work, browsing, videos, uploading downloading apps and O/S updates - all straight out.

 

Thats why we're hitting 90+ % on our 100MB LEA link several times a day now. Trying to get 1000 via the LEA.

[mdrabble]

Just starting to look at this now as we are currently on a 100MB connection on 100MB bearer for approx 1400 users, 500 desktops and BYOD Wifi (with approx 300 connections at the time of looking at the Unifi Dashboard)

 

I've approached our currently provider for cost options for 300MB, 500MB and 1GB or a 1GB Bearer all with failover options.

 

I am opting not to look at 2 different connections from different suppliers as a failover option as we host our own VOIP and Web Servers - so changing IP/DNS settings could cause issues (unless I'm overthinking things....)

[mavhc]

Well, the IP would change, but then you just change the dns so it points to the new IP. Stupid voip systems that use IP to authenticate (gamma, looking at you), are a bit of a problem. Your other option is it just fails. Having things working 10 mins later is better than not at all.

[MartinT]

I've just received the go-ahead to uprate to 1Gbps. Yay!

[MatthewL]

Key thing is checking where all the wires end up as they might come into the building different but down the street all end up in the same duct defeating the object. 4G/5G if in a good coverage area I think is probably best way to go. Install an external antenna and get a good router and link it in in. Some routers allow multiple sim cards.

[mavhc]

5G, like 4 and 3 and 2G will be fast at first, if you're near a tower, because no one else is using it, then slow down over time as more and more people use it more and more

[MartinT]

I use 4G at home dedicated to streaming music, it gives me a reliable 35M connection. Our wired broadband is only 20M.