Moving away from ICT4Leeds (Leeds Learning Network)

[Bruce123]

Does anyone have any experience of moving a school's Internet/filtering from being supplied by ICT4Leeds (formally Leeds City Council), to our own Smoothwall/Internet connection?

 

Filtering is done using on on-prem Smoothwall appliance (managed by ICT4Leeds) and Internet is via a 100Bit broadband connection (VirginMedia).

 

We understand that the on-prem Smoothwall appliance is setup as a child node which receives policies etc. from an off-prem parent appliance managed by ICT4Leeds.

 

We also understand from a recent conversation with ICT4Leeds that the broadband connection isn't a simple a vanilla Internet connection but is actually a connection into their WAN and moving forward we wouldn't be able to utilise this as an Internet connection with our own Smoothwall.

 

So I guess to move away we're looking at having to have a new broadband connection installed?

 

There is, of course, the existing contractual agreement with ICT4Leeds that we would need to look at.

 

Any advice is much appreciated.

 

Kind Regards, Bruce.

Edited March 10, 2021 by Bruce123

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi @Bruce123,

 

we're the biggest supplier of broadband and filtering to schools in Leeds and have been for the past 6 years or so.

 

I'll send you over a PM if you'd like to talk about work required to move from Leeds to us or another supplier.

 

It's really not that difficult so don't be swayed by a lot of the rubbish we've seen saying why you can't leave your current supplier as much of it isn't true or there are ways to mitigate any impact.

 

Thanks

 

Dave