ISPs

[NickDay85]

Hi all,

 

I'm just looking at options for ISPs way ahead of our renewal with our current provider. 

 

What are people generally using these days? 

 

 

[TheHyperTechie]

RM here, can't complain to be honest.

[BKGarry]

Been using Wave9 since 2020 (yes we swapped over 3 days before the first lockdown of the dark times), they have been really good, with our last renewal in April, we got Smoothwall Cloud and onsite filter and Monitor added on, and seems to be running just fine for us.

[DWilson1997]

Another vote for Wave9.

[Olliedawg]

Wave9 here

Had some initial issues setting up the backup connection, but other than that all been good.

[Jawloms]

LGfL - They are brilliant. Very helpful and knowledgeable when needed, and the amount of add-ons they give you for free save you money elsewhere. We have RedStor backups with them which backup our onsite stuff and M365 tenancy, so no need to purchase additional software, they also include a decent level of Sophos, so no need to pay for AV. And there's loads of other stuff too.

[nicholab]

Used Wave9 in a previous life.  The question has to be: are leased lines worth it in this day and age, with FTTP heading towards XGS-PON?   We use Fibrus here on FTTP, and so far it has been as good as our old leased line.

[Rob_D]

We get ours through Southern Communications Group. Installation was a faff, but now it's in it works fine.

 

8 minutes ago, nicholab said:

The question has to be: are leased lines worth it in this day and age, with FTTP heading towards XGS-PON?

Even with FTTP and stupidly high capacity, you're still going to get contention in heavily populated areas. So inner city schools might continue to find benefit in leased lines for a while yet.

[NickDay85]

Thanks for the responses so far. Wave9 does seem to be a regular name that I see on here. I have put in a request for some more info. We're in a position where our renewal isn't until next summer but it doesn't hurt to get a head start.

[Cat_Jam148]

1 hour ago, Jawloms said:

LGfL - They are brilliant. Very helpful and knowledgeable when needed, and the amount of add-ons they give you for free save you money elsewhere. We have RedStor backups with them which backup our onsite stuff and M365 tenancy, so no need to purchase additional software, they also include a decent level of Sophos, so no need to pay for AV. And there's loads of other stuff too.

LGFL here too and have been since about 2015 - deffo recommend. 

The add-ons are a big help to us.

[nicholab]

I used to struggle running server on an LGFL connection as the ports are where not open by default.

[Adam_Exa]

4 hours ago, NickDay85 said:

Hi all,

 

I'm just looking at options for ISPs way ahead of our renewal with our current provider. 

 

What are people generally using these days? 

 

 

 

Exa Networks here; please feel free to reach out via my contact details below for more information. 

Edited October 13 by Adam_Exa

[Squelch]

Another +1 for Wave 9. When you contact support they are on it straight away. Our renewal was less than the previous renewal. What's not to like?

[DalekSec]

I work for an ISP, so we provider ourselves  

 

Worth looking out for any alt-nets nearby, some give schools discounts e.g. we provide internet to churches, community centers etc for only £1 a month!

 

Unsure on schools though... 

[msi_school]

3 hours ago, Rob_D said:

We get ours through Southern Communications Group. Installation was a faff, but now it's in it works fine.

 

Even with FTTP and stupidly high capacity, you're still going to get contention in heavily populated areas. So inner city schools might continue to find benefit in leased lines for a while yet.

I use FTTPs in five schools in the suburbs with no issues, the ISPs tell me that the busy times for homes is in the evenings and we have a burst capacity of 200% of the nominal capacity on a five minute average useage  so we actually get better through put at busy times

[Wave9_Lee]

Thanks for the vote(s) of confidence, much appreciated.  We've said many times on here, alongside good value, fast and effective support is the key metric for schools.   On the other comments;

 

FttP - appropriate for primary schools if available.  We can offer the same fix time SLA as leased lines these days, but as mentioned there is some contention on the service.  This will be minimal in the daytime, especially in residential areas as most home use is in the evening.  It's more of a problem in city areas as businesses will be increasingly using FttP.  Ethernet over FttP (EoFttP), which is an uncontended version will be available shortly, so this will be a good alternative to Leased Lines going forward.  Always consider your upstream capacity however, max on FttP currently is 1800Mbps down and 120Mbps up (there is a rare 220Mbps up service but not really relevant).  The upstream is important because if you saturate your upstream, this will impact your download experience.  There are an increasing number of Alt-nets available now too who offer enterprise standard services for 20-40% less than leased line.

 

Something else to consider is that if your provider is terminating both your primary and backup connections in the same datacentre/firewall cluster etc, you need to ensure that there is proper resilience in place in that architecture otherwise a core failure could take out both connections - so not an effective backup connection. (see other threads)

 

We offer a co-managed firewall (Sophos) as part of the service, so port changes, exceptions and troubleshooting are pretty instant, and you can change your DNS etc (see RM thread from today)