Internet Connections

[wesleyw]

A brief overview first, our school is currently looking at academy status because of this I'm wondering how it will affect our current internet connection with our LEA. If we have to pay more to them for it etc.. Also, if we decided to go it alone how would we accomplish this?

 

Our current ISP is RM but it's a deal through our LEA so I'm unsure of specifics such as how many static IPs we have by default, how many subdomain URLs from the main domain we are allowed. How much it costs to have more and how much it will be to buy these directly.

 

What would we be looking to pay for a line to the internet anything from 20mb to 100mb (Sync Download).

 

Filtering options are another point to consider I'm looking at smoothwall as the best priced option with the richest feature set, Bloxx and Websense just seem a little too much.

 

A firewall would also be needed this could be done by our old Cisco router but does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

 

Wes

[tom_newton]

Starting at the bottom and working up...

 

Your cisco is likely to be able to provide excellent firewall capability if you are happy managing it. Otherwise, we SmoothWall types also do firewall bits, which are extremely cost effective when bought with the filter.

 

Internet connections - generally you have leased line, very expensive way to get bandwidth, or aggregated ADSL. 20-40 meg is perfectly achievable. These folk: Smart Connect are reputed to be OK, If you call Andrew Bamford there, he may well be able to help you. Also worth checking if you are getting FTTC in your area any time soon. Here in West Leeds (Armley exchange) we are apparently due in August, and will be able to get VDSL at 40x10 (yum).

 

Worth noting that many LEA-provided connections are simply bonded DSL.

 

Finally... IPs, subdomains, etc. How many IPs you need depends entirely on how many internal services you need to run. Depending on your setup and the connectivity you end up with, it may prove more effective to move shool websites outside your own network. Subdomains are effectively free, however - once you control your own DNS you should have no issue there.

 

HTH,

[wesleyw]

I think currently I have around 6 services I run that are internally hosted we use ISA to publish 5 of them and a NetBSD box for the basic website. Depends on the term expensive I suppost but the leased line or the agg. ADSL will suffice I should think as we currently use 24mb I'd like to think moving away we'll aim for a better speed than that.

 

Wes