R_1 Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Hi We are looking to change our Academy broadband provider from our local authority to someone less like a dictatorship Has anyone done this in the past and if so, who did you choose? Any pros or cons to doing this? Thanks in advance.
RTFM Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 We are about to move to BT. Depending where you are BT are the ones who likely provide the actual hardware in terms of whats at the exchange and what cabling is coming into school. If any other ISP has issues it's usually "we will need to get BT to run a line test". Just cut out the middle man I'd certainly get some quotes from BT for a leased line (something like 20mb onto a 100mb bearer perhaps?) depending on what sort of price you want to go upto, what the cabling is like in the area etc etc.....
sippo Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Do BT have any contact details for such services?
RTFM Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 BT Business Direct - Open the door to Superfast, Secure Internet with BTnet This isnt where we found the number from, we just phoned BT business and then got the number from them for our local sales team of educational leased lines........
irsprint84 Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 We are going with a company called Global AXS, pretty cheap at 100MB
m25man Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Easynet, Fluidata and Opal are just a few of the ISP's we deal with for our private school clients. The SDSL products have been discontinued now so Im wondering how the carriers are going to support bonded copper? If you want 100mb on a 100 Fibre Bearer this is around £12kpa + a one off installation fee. 20Mb Burst ADSL with 2.6Mb upload is £2000 pa with a £350 set up fee. If you already have Fibre coming in there is no guarantee that BT will be able to release this from your LEA's MPLS use and you may have to get a fresh one blown in.
irsprint84 Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 We got quotes from global AXS 2.5k setup and 8.5k annual cost for 100mb 1/1
Edu-IT Posted March 14, 2011 Posted March 14, 2011 We got quotes from global AXS 2.5k setup and 8.5k annual cost for 100mb 1/1 You must live on the Exchange?
psillars Posted March 15, 2011 Posted March 15, 2011 Hi, If you are looking for a cheaper entry point, depending on your distance from the exchange, there is a product called EFM - Ethernet in the First Mile. It sits between broadband and leased lines. It comes in over copper and uses bonded copper pairs to provide the service. If you are around 1000m to 2000m from an enabled exchange you should be able to get around 15 - 20mbs up and down for around £300 a month. Not as good as a leased line but better than SDSL or broadband. Paul
Edu-IT Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 So leased lines... are there different types of leased lines or am I being strung along? My understanding is that a leased line goes direct from your site to the nearest PoP. Having had a discussion with an ISP this morning regarding connectivity all the quotes I have, which are half the price of theirs, won't be for a leased line uncontended. I'm confused. I thought by the very nature a leased line is dedicated to the site?
zag Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 Depends what you've asked for. I got quotes from globalAXS, BT and easynet and Virgin all for uncontended 100mbit fiber + router + install on 3-5 year contracts. They ranged from 12-16k a year. If you are talking about a LEA supplied grid for learning then they probably go back to the ISP where it uses a common backbone that is shared. I just wrote a blog post about all this here Moving away from LEA supplied Broadband - Blogs - EduGeek.net
localzuk Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 So leased lines... are there different types of leased lines or am I being strung along? My understanding is that a leased line goes direct from your site to the nearest PoP. Having had a discussion with an ISP this morning regarding connectivity all the quotes I have, which are half the price of theirs, won't be for a leased line uncontended. I'm confused. I thought by the very nature a leased line is dedicated to the site? There seem to be 2 different sets of companies out there - 1 who entirely use BTs network (ie. resellers) and they seem to come in very expensive, and the other set who have their own networks (but sometimes use BT for the last stretch) which usually come in cheaper. So, for example BT based quotes for us come in at around £24 - £28k pa for 100Mbit, and other providers come in around £14.5k pa. However, RBCs don't operate like this. In most cases, they use BT for most of the network, but not the connection back to the internet itself, instead this is done via their own systems and is usually pretty heavily contended. So, even though you have 100Mbit in your school, you have no guarantee that you'd get that speed to the net (eg. I was quoted that i'd get 4Mbps on the 95th percentile with our RBC). 1
Edu-IT Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 There seem to be 2 different sets of companies out there - 1 who entirely use BTs network (ie. resellers) and they seem to come in very expensive, and the other set who have their own networks (but sometimes use BT for the last stretch) which usually come in cheaper. Yes, that's the explanation I got. :-) Cheers!
tom_newton Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 Uncontended is not about the bit from your lair to the PoP, its abut the bit that goes from the exchange/PoP to "that internet". Basically, to use home DSL as an example, everyones line will run as fast as it is able, eg 8Meg on DSLmax. but if your ISP sells 50 8meg dsl lines in your area, they will probably only have a 10Mb link to the internet, hoping not everyone's on at once. This is the way it works in LAs generally. If you are paying for uncontended - and you'll pay more, sometimes a lot more, but you should get the advertised rate whatever the weather
psillars Posted March 18, 2011 Posted March 18, 2011 Hi, This in essence is correct but could be expanded slightly. There are two points of contention. The first is the point from your local exchange to the ISPs backbone and then from the ISPs backbone to the Internet. The ISP incurs most of it's cost getting the traffic from your exchange to their backbone. The bit out on to the internet is cheap. If you stick with the broadband example then the cost to get the traffic from the backbone to the Internet is less than 1% of the cost of getting it from your exchange to the backbone. Most contention on broadband comes from ISPs controlling the bandwidth used from the exchange to the backbone to keep costs predictable. Leased lines come with zero contention and although carried in the same way have guaranteed bandwidth. Not sure if that helps a little more. Paul 1
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