RBCs: What do you want from them?

[sparkeh]

For obvious reasons there is a a lot of discussion going on about Internet connectivity, RBCs and alternate providers. Most of it seems focussed on moving away yet I was wondering:

 

What core services would you wish to see being offered by an RBC?

[featured_spectre]

Smoothwall box in each school, as the RBC filtering is absolutely shocking

[sparkeh]

Smoothwall box in each school, as the RBC filtering is absolutely shocking

 

Ok but looking at this more generally, would you want filtering as part of the core service? Or perhaps not and use your own solution?

[featured_spectre]

far superior filtering to what we are getting would be nice.

[teejay]

I think for us and for most secondary schools we want the RBC to stop faffing about with extra services and just concentrate on providing a reliable, fast network connection. We'll do the filtering at our end, our own email, vle etc etc.

For primary, I can see a filtering system and a few extras are required, but even then these could be provided and managed by the pyramid secondary quite effectively.

[Guest Guest]

Something which works.

 

In all serious I want a say. I want the council to have a say. I don't want to have a useless, and usually more expensive, product forced on us and then have to pay for another product to replace it. We as a school can't afford it, and we as a country can't either!

 

 

Services wise;

Filtering

Exchange email

Remote backup

MS and linux web servers with useful languages on them; asp, php, etc. and/or VPSs to stick our own choice of VLE on so that each school can pick which one suits them best.

Database servers; MSSQL and MySQL

ISP service monitoring; the ability to see how saturated a link is when "the internet is on a go slow" etc.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Guest

[Dos_Box]

John and I had a long chat about this at teh R3play expo a couple of weeks back. What seems by many to be the main bone of contention is that varoius RBC's can no longer provide the service schools want. Sites some schools need are routinely blocked, other services such as email are often flakey and levels af frustration run high. I suspect that RBC's need to remodel themselves as well as recognising that trying o keep up with the increasing demands of schools as more and more essential cloud based services are either not available to them or delivered in almost unusable ways surrounded by a levels of beurocracy not even envisaged by Dante!!

[SpuffMonkey]

I think for us and for most secondary schools we want the RBC to stop faffing about with extra services and just concentrate on providing a reliable, fast network connection. We'll do the filtering at our end, our own email, vle etc etc.

For primary, I can see a filtering system and a few extras are required, but even then these could be provided and managed by the pyramid secondary quite effectively.

 

I'd ditto that - decent connection at a competitive price.

[localzuk]

The central service they should put 90% of their effort into is reliable connectivity at a decent price.

 

Filtering should be a secondary service, which can be opted into - so that those with their own systems in place don't have to come up with bodges to get round their own systems.

 

Email, VLE, etc... should all be tertiary systems - bought into if wanted.

 

Also, RBCs shouldn't be geographically limited IMO. Why should it be that SWGfL has a monopoly down here? Why can't it be that all funds are given to the schools and then they choose the ISP that best suits them? Whilst getting their email from elsewhere, and VLE from somewhere else?

[TechMonkey]

The central service they should put 90% of their effort into is reliable connectivity at a decent price.

Filtering should be a secondary service, which can be opted into - so that those with their own systems in place don't have to come up with bodges to get round their own systems.

Email, VLE, etc... should all be tertiary systems - bought into if wanted.

 

I agree with this but I also understand that unless the council can say, we will provide x number of schools the companies won't provide the discounts or price levels. My current bug bear is that if you don't opt in to a service or system your money disappears. We've just been told a service here that we don't use will be subsidised but will we see our share of that allowing us to improve the system we use?

[localzuk]

I agree with this but I also understand that unless the council can say, we will provide x number of schools the companies won't provide the discounts or price levels. My current bug bear is that if you don't opt in to a service or system your money disappears. We've just been told a service here that we don't use will be subsidised but will we see our share of that allowing us to improve the system we use?

 

I don't see why the council can't still do the whole 'we will provide X schools' thing. They just need to consult with the schools before they do it. So, they'll actually be able to give an accurate number, whilst not forcing schools to use systems they don't want.

[featured_spectre]

We are looking at pulling the plug on the RBC in our area, for the following reasons

 

County based emails ([email protected]) seems to be down more than it is up, which is highly frustrating.

The filtering gets flicked off and we have had children accessing youtube etc (I've now added about 2000 sites to our ISA as a bit of redundancy) but its still not enough

The actual broadband service we pay for is a minimum of 20MB and upto 100MB, we're lucky if we see 2MB at best, and independant speed tests by various companies have confirmed this.

 

If we switched to BT Business Broadband, we know what we are paying for, and the money we save, can go towards a smoothy box. Its not just my school thats suffering, there are atleast 6 in my area that I know feel the same.

[36Degrees]

I think for us and for most secondary schools we want the RBC to stop faffing about with extra services and just concentrate on providing a reliable, fast network connection. We'll do the filtering at our end, our own email, vle etc etc.

For primary, I can see a filtering system and a few extras are required, but even then these could be provided and managed by the pyramid secondary quite effectively.

 

That's also what we would prefer. I'd also like to be able to speak to them directly and not get the "you tell us, we tell A who decide it's B's area who then determine the issue is with C's equipment and they have 3rd party support so D's engineers will contact you".

[localzuk]

That's also what we would prefer. I'd also like to be able to speak to them directly and not get the "you tell us, we tell A who decide it's B's area who then determine the issue is with C's equipment and they have 3rd party support so D's engineers will contact you".

 

Sounds like our connection here! 5 different companies involved IIRC.

[36Degrees]

LEA Helpdesk inform their Technical Support who inform Synetrix if necessary. They then contact Kingston Communications if it is hardware related and an engineer then contacts you if it can't be resolved remotely.

[garethEds]

I have to say that Swansea LEA seem to have got it sussed as a provider for the school. Back in the day we did everything ourselves (with an RM network) and I was a bit against re-joining the LEA provision due to the experiences the school had years ago.

 

Swansea LEA provide a broadband link upto the school switch (100Mbit). They provide us with an Enterprise AD structure which works - whilst allowing schools the control of their own OU. They also provide us with:

• central Exchange solution
  
• a central Moodle installation
  
• centra Symantec Endpoint
  
• central WSUS (although schools can install their own).
  
• local dc - even though there are 4 central ones
  
• connections to the Welsh VC network
  
• central Sharepoint portal with SIMS Connect
  
• central filtering (Netsweeper) - it has it's faults but is okay in general
  
• VCN Remote access
  
• Very approachable team of technical staff
  

They have taken the management out of it all - which is fine by me, yet have allowed the schools to keep playing.

 

The helpdesk is central and only a phone call away.

 

The faults are as follows:

• not enough members in their team (not their fault - finances I guess)
  
• not 24/7 - which in this day and age they have to be
  
• slow provision for Welsh language (this is being addressed)
  
• strict SLA - once it is on paper there's not much room for movement (but it is fair)
  
• not allowing anything through their firewalls - no Skype provision, not allowed web servers
  
• slow future development (due to small team and lack of finances)
  

These are small faults really and just issues I have. They are not major things. In all fairness the small team they have support 15 secondary schools and around 100 primaries, numerous libraries and other education units. They do a mighty fine job.

 

A poster mentioned here that their RBC do not talk to the schools - Swansea do talk to us and we appreciate it.

 

Hope this helps someone, but I'm just saying how it is here,

 

Gareth

[sparkeh]

Ok guess I should put my own tuppence in:

 

I think that the core service should be the connection. Everything else should be on an opt-in basis to give schools the flexibility to mange their services as they see fit, some schools can then go their own way and others can still opt into the RBC managed offering. I don't believe that one size fits all (but I do realise that opt-in services has a cost implication for the RBC).

 

Looking around, schools can get an email service from MS or Google for free, or course there are issues to consider but in these austere times we have a stark choice: pay our RBC for exchange or let MS provide it for free. I am very tempted by Live@Edu which in fact has more functionality and for a small fee integrates with your AD for auto account generation. If we were to move to this solution then I don't want to be paying for RBC mail as well.

 

I believe that this applies to other services as well, we should have the freedom to compare various offerings like for like without being hamstrung by already paying for a service as part of the whole package that we might be able to source elsewhere for more value for money.

[User3204]

Number one has to be reliability... really really important for the internet to be connected even if only on at 10mb.

 

A decent SLA that specifies clearly what the uptime is expected to be, how long to fix it, and what will happen if it all goes pear-shaped.

 

It would be nice if they had a failover, so if something drops off (which happened to us a couple of weeks ago) we can still get onto the internet somehow.

A caching server for WSUS, Mcafee, or whatever else we need access through to, we did get offered to join into out LA Mcafee license, but it was going to cost us more, and meant we wouldn't have an EPO server locally.

 

A decent helpdesk, with an online portion so that you can see what problems other schools have in the area related to the service, and join in on.

When you ask them to do something, the confidence to believe them...

 

A time server... small thing, but it has taken me ages to get all my servers working together.

 

Access to whatever statutary reporting servers, for census, plasc, etc, that we need, and support for accessing them.

 

The ability to have any ports/services open that we want, I can't get SSH access on port 23.

 

A pricelist for all the other services that they provide (in fact a list of any sort would be nice).

 

There are of course a few other services that are nice:

Web filtering - optional, so we don't end up with two, all the secondary schools I know have onsite filtering, we don't need any more.

VLE / MLE - optional

Upstream \ offsite backup for school data within the LA / RBC Core - optional and if we had a fast link to this (say 100mb or faster) then usable.