Internet providers - Going it alone

[LukeC]

Just after peoples thoughts, opinions and experiances. Our internet is currently provided by our LEA 100 meg connection and they also provide the filtering. Just wondering for those that are independent what internet provider they use and what the service is like and what they get and ruffly how much they pay a year. I would be also interested in how they are set up in teh terms of filltering and who they use and what sort of firewall they have.

 

Thanks.

[Soulfish]

Well we're just in the process of going it alone here. The notice should be going in to our LEA this week . We're planning to go for a 30mb/s on a 100mb/s bearer through Opal. We already use Smoothwall for filtering and we have a Juniper SRX240 firewall. Having had pricing from over 15 providers we found there to be a big variation in price, partly down to providers not wanting the business and also down to how far you are from their nearest POP. The further away you are the more it costs to install the connection, the higher the cost is likely to be.

 

If you already have fibre in place then it may be cheaper to install, but it really depends on who's providing the current connection and if you're new provider can reuse the circuit/ducting. I hope that helps!

 

EDIT:

Just realised I forgot to add our costs to the above! Currently best price we're getting is around 9.5k/year for 30mb/s on 100mb/s with 0 install cost including a managed router. Best price for 100mb/s on 100mb/s was around £16k with 1k install. Both of those come with backup ADSL connections with auto-failover

Edited November 15, 2010 by Soulfish
Costs!

[AngryTechnician]

We're on a lesser connection at the moment - 40Mb/10Mb FTTC from Zen Internet, which costs us £65/month +VAT. A 100Mb leased line is MUCH dearer - I'll let someone who has one break that cost to you.

 

In terms of filtering, we currently rely on an onsite RM SmartCache that was left over from our days as an RM network. The box is paid for and the filtering updates are dirt cheap at less than £100/year. It's not the best solution though, and if I had the money to replace it I would have a Smoothwall box instead. The filtering subscription is a bit dearer, but worth it. The initial cost of replacing the hardware is what's putting me off at the moment.

[localzuk]

We're not independent at the moment, but I have researched it a bit here. As mentioned before, the pricing is dependant on your distance from the nearest POP. Ours is in a nearby village for some reason, and as such the cost for a 10Mbit connection on a 100Mbit barer comes in at £12.5k per annum with BT, increasing to about £17k for a 30Mbit connection.

[tom_newton]

@AngryTechnician; How're you finding FTTC? We're planning to make the leap here when our sysadmin team is back to full strength - and i'm even contemplating it at home (though only vaguely, as I am from Yorkshire, and as such disgracefully tight )

[dave.81]

Our school is in the middle of nowhere and is private so no LEA here. Have looked at leased lines but most we can get on a sub-50K budget is 4mb. So it's 4mb ADSL line here for all.

[john]

Currently investigating my options, we were paying heading for 10K for a 10 meg connection with the LA, looking at bonded ADSL (no SDSL where we are and a leased line I know from a previous job is painfully expensive due to rurality!) we can get a 3 line bonded ADSL system in for around 5K a year included router and 4hr responce time or we get refunded service which is looking a good possible option.

 

I expect this years BETT show to have a few firms selling internet direct to schools that maybe only ever used to deal with LAs as schools cannot afford the LA costs.

 

Do remember to check everything your LA provided though, its more than just internet so you need to make sure you tick all boxes or you may find yourself with a sudden moment when something you rely on is no-longer present.

[Soulfish]

 

Do remember to check everything your LA provided though, its more than just internet so you need to make sure you tick all boxes or you may find yourself with a sudden moment when something you rely on is no-longer present.

 

+1 on this. Our LEA provides filtering, firewall, access to the various NGN resources and spam/antivirus mail checking (through their Cisco IronPort). We already use our own filtering (Smoothwall), have our own firewall (Juniper SRX240), and are about to move our spam/antivirus checking to MS Forefront Exchange Online. The only thing we're unable to replace/replicate like for like is the NGN resources, but having talked it through with everyone they're not resources we use so aren't that fussed with loosing access to them.

 

Because of the services we already use, the fact that the NGN resources are unnecessary for us and that we're able to get a better connection cheaper it's a no-brainer for us to move

[sonofsanta]

We've been independent for about 4 years now after a falling out with our RBC over the speeds provided. We've been doing very well operating independently (as our RBC was also a managed service, it created all sorts of ties into the county Intranet and systems) and I've just signed the contract to upgrade our connection from the RM-provided 8mb Bonded ADSL (which now no longer works - thanks BT) to a 20mb leased line on a 100mb bearer.

 

Our provider is Novatech, who have subcontracted to Vaioni who I believe are then using Opal, so I suspect I may have been able to get a slightly lower cost, but the cost we got was excellent compared to the competition anyway. Over a three year period it's about £25k total for the connection and a managed router with pro-active monitoring, including install, and in the same time frame we'd have paid nearly £20k for the bonded service anyway. We do now have to pay for our Smoothwall on top of that, as previously the RM filtering was included, but the flexibility and power of the Smoothwall over the RM system makes it worth the investment anyway.

 

So although the service hasn't started yet, I'm pretty happy with what we've got coming in - it will be a vast improvement both in speed and flexibility of the filtering. YMMV though as we are already used to running away from the LEA.

 

Word of warning though: BT are going round ripping out the bonding hardware at exchanges to replace it with ADSL Max equipment instead. They will do this without warning, without notice and without checking if anyone is using a bonding service. I know this because they did it to me over half term. You can imagine my expression when this happened.

[localzuk]

Word of warning though: BT are going round ripping out the bonding hardware at exchanges to replace it with ADSL Max equipment instead. They will do this without warning, without notice and without checking if anyone is using a bonding service. I know this because they did it to me over half term. You can imagine my expression when this happened.

 

If you have a contract, 'sue' is the answer here. No provider can randomly rip out equipment if they are under contract.

[tom_newton]

It is unfortunate - multilink PPP is a great way of doing bonding, but no ISPs seem interested in letting you play with it

[john]

It is unfortunate - multilink PPP is a great way of doing bonding, but no ISPs seem interested in letting you play with it

 

Spent a couple of hours talking to a firm local to you that does MPPP Tom they had heard of Smoothwall (you'd hope so with them being Leeds based!) Was an interesting conversation There sending me some details on Bonded ADSL systems for us and the costs are very favorable and with our 8mb sync we should get a good service for quite a lot less than the LA.

[Disease]

I have just had a quote from Virgin MEdia for:

 

100 - Mbps

One Off Installation Charge £0.00

ISP Connection Annual Rental Charge £12,000.00

CISCO 3845 Fully Managed Rental Charge £2,950.00

Total Annual Charge for 100Mbps £14,950.00

 

Seems like good value, you need to budget in filtering though on top of that.

[stevef1]

Hi everyone, I’m looking in to this but my boss wants clarification in terms of security and BECTA standards, a question to the people who are independent of the local authority what firewall and filtering solutions do you have?

I’m looking at a managed 100 Meg connection via virgin for around £13,000, we have Smoothwall network guardian what else, in your valued opinions, is required?

What are you telling or have told senior management/governors about the change over, mine are worried about data security when/if we get our own broadband connection. My local authority is going on about 2 stage security (crypto key’s etc) what are you doing about this?

 

 

thanks

 

stevef1

[Disease]

Hi everyone, I’m looking in to this but my boss wants clarification in terms of security and BECTA standards,

 

Just tell him Becta standards do not exist anymore, just like Becta

[stevef1]

@Disease, yup he knows that but they still think the standards are important, i need to be able to say something like, most schools are using 1xfirewall 1xfilter system 1xvpn ...... what extras are you getting? filter system etc

[dave.81]

I've just had a quote from BT as i'm being told we can now get a leased line of greater than 2mb lol.

 

All on 100meg bearer, 10meg@£19000, 20meg@£21000 and 100meg@£31000 all plus VAT. Sickening prices just because we are a little bit rural!

[ayoward]

I've just had a quote from BT as i'm being told we can now get a leased line of greater than 2mb lol.

 

All on 100meg bearer, 10meg@£19000, 20meg@£21000 and 100meg@£31000 all plus VAT. Sickening prices just because we are a little bit rural!

 

You see I think this is where traditionally going with your LA has been beneficial. I know where we are in the Y&H region, there are a lot of more rural schools as well as those in the city, so an LA has been able to aggregate the costs for connections across the whole area. This for example has been beneficial to the rural school who have been able to pay £3K per annum for their line, even though it would actually cost £5K and the town based school has paid £3K when the actual cost of the line would be £1K. Again if it was based on pupil numbers, the more rural school would lose out again as their connection cost would be higher, but they would have fewer pupil numbers and therefore a smaller budget.

 

It is easy to adopt an "I'm alright jack" attitude and only be interested in your microcosm, but it does have a knock on effect in most cases.

[dave.81]

Being an independant school we've never had the choice of the LA comforting our costs, i'm not bitter much lol

[Cools]

We will stick with the LA getting 20meg its just gone up by 40% making it £7,168 this year and that's over 8 x 2mb lines.

[k-strider]

I too am looking at changing, living close to a POP i thought the price would be better with BT or Virgin, still waiting for Virgin to come in but BT comes in at 13,540 (5yrs PA) or 14,070 (3yrs PA) for 30M on a 100meg barer. then we would need some filtering so having got a quote from smoothwall this pushes the cost substantially higher than our SWGFL proposed costs for next year. unless i can get a 20 or 30 Meg line from virgin at something like 5-6K i don't think its worth moving away at the moment unfortunately. i would be worried about using something like SDSL or ADSL as the speed is so low, and i think it would be noticeable if we have 3-400 odd students online at the same time, which is possible here.

[detjo]

We're a small private primary school (bout 200 students) and have been using a 1Mbit connection on old copper line with BT, and it was painfully slow.

I have just got a 2yr deal with them to upgrade to fibre on 40/6Mbit ADSL for £45+VAT per month. We only have one ICT room with 20 PC's (plus admin staff) so it should be enough.

We have a Cisco firewall in place and currently using Websense filtering so that's already sorted.

[john]

This year at BETT from what I've seen so far I would expect to find a number of firms selling ISP Service, including LUNS (Lancaster Uni Network Services) who are the people behind CLEO (well are until BT take over and IMHO destroy the hard work done by them in an incredibly rural setting!). The profile for LUNS on the BETT site says that the are launching into the wider market at BETT, and others will be doing the same. I expect it to be a busy week on for ISP services and Filtering Suppliers and areas associated with them. So don't make any hasty rushes into things until you've visited BETT where I am sure you will find some good options and offers.

 

Make a date with Smoothwall for your filtering, and you can visit us on the Edugeek stand at the same time as they are next to us

[ayoward]

Being an independant school we've never had the choice of the LA comforting our costs, i'm not bitter much lol

 

Have you ever approached your RBC directly?

[Nexarius]

We are tied into a county arrangement (Oxfordshire) paying £2600/year for a 2mbit SDSL link. This does not include filtering, we have to either pay the county extra to use theirs, or provide our own (but it has to be BECTA-compliant...)

 

Does anyone else think this is excessive? We only have 200 pupils, so a maximum of about 20 people using the connection at the same time. I reckon straightforward ADSL would be faster!