Internet connection speed in a newly built school

[Divaldo]

Hi,

 

The school I am based in is getting a brand new building built. I'm just wondering if anyone else works in a newly built school and what internet connection speed you had installed?

 

The builders are suggesting 20mb, but as we're going to be backing up data from feeder schools over the internet and hosting a VLE for 4/5 schools to share, I'm wondering whether this is enough.

 

Does anyone mind sharing their thoughts?

 

Thanks.

[kmount]

Hi Divaldo,

 

Are you a member of the EMBC? If so, this should be a question you pose to your LA.

 

If not, how many computers do you have on the go, and do you have indicative figures of the data you need to back up from the feeders?

[Hightower]

Shouldn't the builders be suggesting what bricks and mortar to use instead?!

[36Degrees]

What speed do you have at the moment and how much is it used? If you can find out this information (EMBC have a system called Cacti where they can look at your usage) it may help with your decision.

[Divaldo]

Hi Kim,

 

We are an EMBC member, but it's the LA who are asking us/the builders what speed we require!

 

We'll have around 150 computers on site but no data as of yet about what we're backing up.

 

Thanks for your reply.

[kmount]

Hi there,

 

I can't speak for Leics but in Northants there's development in place which is upgrading some schools to 20mbit from the previous 10.

 

I think you need to speak with your LA more indepthly as it might be possible to allow feeder<>your school comms over the EMBC network rather than the "internet" which could in theory allow you quicker inter site access without the large cost for a fatter internet pipe.

 

Grumbledook is the Northants LA technical manager who deals with EMBC a lot, he might be able to offer some speculative advice.

[Divaldo]

That's great guys, thank you for the info.

[GrumbleDook]

If you are getting a 20mb connection it is likely to be a WES100 circuit, but capped at 20mb. I would speak with the LA directly to ask about whether there is the option to increase this in the future, but there may be costs attached to this. Each LA varies in how they deal with such costs and I can't speak for Leics on this.

 

To help your planning you should look at what services you are likely to make use of, if your learning platform is remotely hosted, if you plan to use off-site backup solutions, whether you are going to host on-site services which people will use out of hours, the number of computers you expect to grow to over the next couple of years ...

 

Sorry I can't give you a definitive answer but I hope this helps. I would strongly recommend you speak to the LA team though.

[Divaldo]

Thank you, it is indeed a WES100 circuit capped at 20mb. After doing a bit of digging, I believe 20mb will be sufficient for what we need for the next 4 or 5 years. I have a meeting with the LA people next week, but if the WES100 gives us the option to upgrade in the future then this sounds fine to me.

 

Thanks for the info!

[warrman]

Ours is not a new school but we have a 100mbs link to our LA and they have 2 x 1gbs link to the internet via JANET to cover the whole of the county, we have about 450 computers. Most of the time access is good, if we have a problem it is usually with the AV or firewall computers in the LA's data centre.

 

Happy surfing.

[36Degrees]

We currently have a 10Mb that is getting hammered almost constantly. We host our VLE & website internally plus have home/school access via Sun's Secure Global Desktop but at the moment none of these are being fully utilised (only staff currently using SGD, for example). The system will also have an extra 100 Thin Clients installed over the suumer so I'm hoping that when Nottinghamshire complete the "One County One Network" project that this will be greatly increase.

[GrumbleDook]

The EMBC Core is pretty good, most of the Northants Loops have routing along gig bearers and then 2x 1 gig bearers back to the central server farms (with resilient links between them).

 

A 3rd line is now in so we have 2x 1 gig feeds to Janet and 1x 1 gig feed via KCOM ... all sorted but for a bit of balancing IIRC (must read the latest updates ...)

 

Interesting to look at recent reports though which have primaries wanting, on average, 13 meg and secondaries 55 meg. If the bandwidth is there people will use it basically.