EMBC

[alexinnard]

Our school (Latimer Arts College in Kettering) has EMBC 2Mb broadband via a radio link 8O

 

Lately it has been a terrible connection, constantly dropping downloads half way through, not loading all the gfx on websites etc all day.

 

I was just wondering if anybody else is having the same issues with EMBC, or whether it's just us and we need to trim the tops off the trees surrounding the school!!!

 

Cheers

[indie]

I cant comment on EMBC but if you're having problems with your connectivity don't you have a support number you can ring?

 

If it was properly installed it shouldn't have been placed where tree's could grow in it's line of sight, is it definitely radio or is it laser? Radio is slightly more forgiving through tree's where as laser isnt.

[alexinnard]

Definately radio. The kit was installed years ago long before I got here, and looking at old photos of the school, the trees were definately a LOT smaller.

 

I think I will give EMBC a call just to check. Their webview doesn't report any known faults yet, and knowing my luck I am probably going to have to go out there with some clippers and a long rope!

[Nij.UK]

I personally think its just EMBC's network, our school is located in Coalville and we are connected to EMBC via Fiber link and suppose to be getting 10MB or 8MB cant remember

 

we are no way reaching that at all, i would say the service we are recieving is about 1mb IF THAT!

[alexinnard]

Heh, cheers for that. I have worked at two schools that use EMBC now, and from my experience that are totally pants.

[indie]

Sounds like a lot of people aren't happy with their RBC. Our RBC, Northern Grid is great, they're currently working on redundant connection's between LEA's and POP's around the region, just for our network! Downtime is rare and our SLA states anything less than 99.95% uptime and we get compensation.

[Nij.UK]

I think EMBC need to take note from the Northern Grid lot... i would say over a course of the year its neen down more then 99.95%

 

I agree with alex in that EMBC are very poor.. but there is things saying that the contract is going to be passed on to someone else

 

There support line is useless, with the first line support talking down to you as if you dont know anything about a network... not good service at all...

[indie]

Even 0.05% is still alot of downtime, its 21 minutes a month, or over 4 hours a year!

 

They've even paid up on one occasion when it was down for a day due to a fibre being cut!

[pete]

embc connection has been pretty rubbish this week here. I know fujitsu siemens are doing some work in the exchanges around here, so whether this is preventative maintenance or fixing something before we notice.....

 

It was around this time last year that their data centre went titsup due to heat.

[Pottsey]

I find large downloads next to impossible 1 day then the next day or hours later they work. Downloads are often dropped and downtime is bad. Websites often stop working but buy the time some kid has dragged me to the classroom its all back up again. The past few weeks seem worse then normal.

 

The constant maintenance is a right pain as well. It goes down for hours to half a day far to often. Sometimes we even go days without a connation. Still it could be worse I know my old school are still on ISDN as EMBC have not got around to upgrading to broadband yet.

 

If we where a business EMBC would have got a formal complaint and we would have left a long time ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if total downtime over a year hit close to if not 1 month.

 

 

 

 

"view doesn't report any known faults yet,”

They often don’t put faults on there. Ringing up is your best option.

[Dos_Box]

10 MB Fibre, 2 Mbps by radio!!! Good god! Our radios are 54Mbps and fibre anything from 100meg to 1 gig!!

I am so glad we did not put our RBC to tender years ago.

[pete]

10 MB Fibre, 2 Mbps by radio!!! Good god! Our radios are 54Mbps and fibre anything from 100meg to 1 gig!!

I am so glad we did not put our RBC to tender years ago.

 

Fancy borging our rbc?

[spc-rocket]

We had so many problems with EMBC last year that we left their service and went with another supplier.

 

The new connection is brilliant and never goes down and yes they have proper SLAs. We get paid compensation if it goes out of service or SLA drops below 99.5%.

 

The problem with EMBC is that their new connection (10mb) is only to the local concentrator and after that everyone is on it, hence not a 1:1 contention ratio.

 

Ash.

[Norphy]

We're with E2BN. They're not bad but our connection to them can be a bit flaky at times. However that is more down to Beds CC than it is to E2BN.

[alexinnard]

I have just had a letter through stating that EMBC are upgrading their 155Mbps pipe to a gig! Aparantely this means that on the 13th we will be without internet while they do the upgrade. not bad though eh?

[intrigue]

Extremely Mediocre Broadband Connection

 

EMBC are rubbish, FACT!!!!

 

If i was the network Manager here then serious questions wouldbe asked as to why we are still using them

matt

[intrigue]

Having rang them about this outage they have not confirmed anything for the 13th and have told me to contact Carrol Morris my local authority.

hmmm

matt

[spc-rocket]

They should take fujitsu out of the equation. Would sort out a lot problems.

[GrumbleDook]

We have had no letter about the outage either ... in fact we have had very little documentation from them full stop.

 

Schools in Northants are in a slightly different predicament now too ...

 

dotICT has always been the first point of call for EMBC issues ... but now we are stuck with anything with the paperwork for changes of service (internet servers, domain changes, power users) have to go to ICT in Schools service ... who then pass it onto Andy Murphy at Capita dotICT ... so another level of red tape is introduced.

 

And Fujitsu Services have yet to update their paperwork to reflect any of this ...

 

I can honestly see Capita buying it all up when it comes up for renewal and running EMBC. The actually techies up at EMBC generally are decent people and try and work within their limits (they are told if it not Standard Build they are not to give advice or help) and it is people further up the chain making stupid decisions about what is needed and when to do things.

 

And you should hear what the manglers at EMBC say about other RBCs ...

 

EMBC are also holding fire on the Learning Platform front until the new service is arrange (april 2007) and will probably wait until the specification is actually published by Becta, in the meantime they will stick Moodle on for use (including SSO, configuration and design) for a one-off fee that works out far cheaper than yearly costs for Digital Brain, etc.

[GrumbleDook]

They should take fujitsu out of the equation. Would sort out a lot problems.

 

The techies ar ok ... their manglers will be the first against the wall come the revolution.

 

I am still waiting to move our principle domain onto EMBC. They are not allowed to put DNS entries in until they have the tag. That means that I have to move the tag to them (they will not contact nominet to do it ... the LA or the school has to), wait until they are happy ... then I have to ask them to add A and MX records ... and then confirm that the hosts on those records are ok for power user / internet server.

 

The idea that by having the records and ACLs in place before the domain is changed might speed things up and be helpful to the school is something the people further up the chain think is unreasonable.

 

About 5 days in total to sort.

 

Roll on the summer hols.

[alexinnard]

We have had no letter about the outage either ... in fact we have had very little documentation from them full stop.

 

We only got hold of the letter sent to us, because our business manager (bursar) is new to education (ex Misco manager) and believes we should be in the know about everything. Aparantely it was sent to the head, and passed to her. In my last school anything that was sent to the head stayed in her office and usually ended up straight in the bin if it was to do with ICT!

[alexinnard]

They should take fujitsu out of the equation. Would sort out a lot problems.

 

I am still waiting to move our principle domain onto EMBC. They are not allowed to put DNS entries in until they have the tag. That means that I have to move the tag to them (they will not contact nominet to do it ... the LA or the school has to), wait until they are happy ... then I have to ask them to add A and MX records ... and then confirm that the hosts on those records are ok for power user / internet server.

 

We are doing something similar. We registered latimer.org.uk a few weeks back with a private host company but are currently waiting for them to change the tag to EMBC. Our aim is to redevelop our current website - http://www.lcac.org.uk - and put it on the new domain. Our webserver for latimer.org.uk is all up and running, just waiting for EMBC/the private host to do their bit grrrrrr!

[alexinnard]

I find large downloads next to impossible 1 day then the next day or hours later they work. Downloads are often dropped and downtime is bad. Websites often stop working but buy the time some kid has dragged me to the classroom its all back up again. The past few weeks seem worse then normal.

 

The constant maintenance is a right pain as well. It goes down for hours to half a day far to often. Sometimes we even go days without a connation. Still it could be worse I know my old school are still on ISDN as EMBC have not got around to upgrading to broadband yet.

 

If we where a business EMBC would have got a formal complaint and we would have left a long time ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if total downtime over a year hit close to if not 1 month.

 

 

 

 

"view doesn't report any known faults yet,”

They often don’t put faults on there. Ringing up is your best option.

 

We get the same problem here at Latimer. When downloading medium to large files (even printer drivers etc) it will drop mid-way through the download. Most of the time when web browsing, half a site will load then the rest will just be "cannot be displayed"

[GrumbleDook]

We are doing something similar. We registered latimer.org.uk a few weeks back with a private host company but are currently waiting for them to change the tag to EMBC. Our aim is to redevelop our current website - http://www.lcac.org.uk - and put it on the new domain. Our webserver for latimer.org.uk is all up and running, just waiting for EMBC/the private host to do their bit grrrrrr!

 

Remember that there is a 60 day protection on new domains so they can't be pinched ... the easiest thing to do when registering a new domain in these cases is do it straight through nominet and put the EMBC tag in from the beginning.

 

I learnt this lesson with lodgeparktc.info ... only another 5 days until i can get that one moved now.

[alexinnard]

Cheers for the info. We have had a rather rude letter from EMBC stating that they will only host .sch.uk domains for us, and that they cannot do anything else!

 

We have our own webserver on site, with an external IP address from EMBC but are currently waiting to give it a domain name (we had hoped to use latimer.org.uk but EMBC say no.)

 

Our idea was to host our own mail and webserver as the teachers and SLT here refuse to have [email protected] email addresses due to their length.

 

Do you know if EMBC were just fobbing us off. Also how did you go about getting your staff exchange email access using your own domain?

 

I might catch you on MSN tonight if you are in. Cheers

Alex