1c1n (one county, one network)

[Cuppy]

I'm just after some thoughts and opinions on the 1 county 1 network service. I'm personally becoming quite disillusioned with the service what with regular internet and email routing dropouts, poor resolution response times, convoluted procedures for port changes and a general lack of urgency and/or understanding by the helpdesk.

 

At the moment we are yet again without email and have been for the past 3 days with no estimated resolution to the problem. Dependent on the replies I receive I may be seeking alternatives. 1C1N - Cheap, yes - Effective, no!

[Pottsey]

Our school isn’t too impressed. Slow speeds at 10meg is extremely poor in this day and age when you can get 50mb or even 100mb at home. We are now at the stage where staff and children can have mobile phones or those slow USB dongles that are faster than the school internet connection . I can now get faster uploads and faster downloads at home! That’s not even shared between a batch of PC’s either.

 

Very high downtimein the past few months all the downtime adds up to over a weeks for us if not weeks. Far to strict mail filtering were reports between staff get blocked. Although no complaints about the helpdesk very friendly and they keep mailing us updates on calls. They are struggling to sort out our mail problem but I can see they are trying out different solutions so that keep us happy ish. Still wasn’t impressed when I think it was last month there was 3 to 4 day downtime for all schools in the area with zero messages untill day 3.5. Even the websites said everything was ok.

[synaesthesia]

I have nothing of importance to add to this except the clarification that whatever service you are provided, it is NOT in any way comparible to a 100Mbit connection at home. You can't (unless you pay £insertsillynumberhere) even get the same 10Mbit connection at home. It's hard enough having to point this difference out to smaller schools who wouldn't know otherwise!

[irsprint84]

We went on our own and I would never look back

[36Degrees]

We only use the internet connection (not Fronter, email, etc) and have only noticed two differences since getting 1C1N and associated upgrade to 100Mb: 1) Download speeds for programs, etc. seem much faster as they should 2) I often have to reload XFM's webpage as the connection drops (so no radio) and it never did this pre-1C1N.

[Pottsey]

synaesthesia “You can't (unless you pay £insertsillynumberhere) even get the same 10Mbit connection at home. “

Home connections are getting pretty close and without paying silly money. Unlimited upload and download, no bandwidth caps or limited speeds. Automatic backup storage with unlimited space that exceeds what we have in school. x10 faster download speeds again exceeds what we have in school. Granted limited amount of email users, no internet filtering but better uptime and faster response for problems all for £420 a year.

 

Ok I know I am oversimplifying and you cannot use a home system in schools but you can see why some small schools start wondering if they are really getting value for money. If we are paying so much often in the £1000’s why can our school systems not match or exceed what we can get at home for a fraction of the price?

Edited June 16, 2011 by Pottsey

[Dos_Box]

Try giving our sponsor LUNS a ring as they provide net connections to schools. They setup and ran CLEO, so know a thing or two about what schools need.

 

LUNS – Lancaster University Network Services

[synaesthesia]

synaesthesia “You can't (unless you pay £insertsillynumberhere) even get the same 10Mbit connection at home. “

Home connections are getting pretty close and without paying silly money. Unlimited upload and download, no bandwidth caps or limited speeds. Automatic backup storage with unlimited space that exceeds what we have in school. x10 faster download speeds again exceeds what we have in school. Granted limited amount of email users, no internet filtering but better uptime and faster response for problems all for £420 a year.

 

Ok I know I am oversimplifying and you cannot use a home system in schools but you can see why some small schools start wondering if they are really getting value for money. If we are paying so much often in the £1000’s why can our school systems not match or exceed what we can get at home for a fraction of the price?

 

How many of these providers are providing SDSL for anything near "close" ?

[irsprint84]

What I have come across is that a lot of schools are getting fed up with low speeds, poor service while paying a decent amount of money! My veiw has alway been that the pupils at the schoosl should have the best money can buy to give them the best advantage in life. Also in my opinion the way the security is set is too general. Hearing about pupils getting youtube access might give Daily Mail readers a heart attack, but social networking has its place, even with education, if it hasn't why are we discussing anything on this site. Most set up's cannot check the content of the information. It can be done effectively and reasonably, responcible freedom.

 

I allowed youtube for a week and 99% of it was messing around and we're a Grammar School!

[irsprint84]

That's what people have problems with, how can do you control it. Kids will be kids, enquiring minds, but that needs to be nurtured. What would you want them to look at safely!

 

If I went with smoothwall I prob could've!

 

But there is a difference in finding info and wasting 75% of lesson finding music to listen to

[irsprint84]

As said in the other tread saying 'over rated' is a little over the top, lots of people here would swear by it! I would have smoothwall in a flash if it came in roughly the same price as my sonicwall

[synaesthesia]

Youtube is allowed at our school on request - if someone needs it, they come to us with a good reason and they'll be allowed access for a fixed period. Same for entire classes, staff etc. Works rather well.

[GrumbleDook]

Smooth wall sits linux and is overated and cannot respond effectively compared to FortiNet's custom chips set ASIC connected FortiGate. This where content monitoring comes in - 100% info only.

 

Everything has a place whilst FortiNet do some nice stuff, many will find Smoothwall more approprite (remember that both of them have accreditation for use in schools) ... and for many, the filtering provided by RBCs are not just a way of blocking things to stop messing about in class (YouTube is a weapon of mass-distraction) but also to cover the legal aspects for protection of children.

 

The more powerful a tool the more likely it is that it will take more time to configure, maintain, monitor (no point in paying a fortune for reporting tools if no-one looks at them) and adapt as needed on a monthly / weekly / daily basis around the curriculum.

[mavhc]

Speed much better than before, and that's the only thing I really care about (except for the 3 weeks we were on some crappy adsl temp connection that managed about 0.1 Mbit/s on a good day

email worse filtering, but better exchange stuff

reliability worse than before, but that's mostly teething issues IMO

web filter slightly better (don't have to apply filter changes now)

support slightly worse, as they don't seem to know how to fix email filtering

[Pottsey]

synaesthesia said "How many of these providers are providing SDSL for anything near "close" ?

Not sure about how many but they are providing better than our SDSL for £420 a year. Our SDSL is 10mb/10mb for our secondary school and a home connection can be 100mb/10mb for 1 or 2 computers let alone shared between a whole site. I would take that home connection over SDSL any day and the home connection is £420 a year without bandwidth limits or caps.

 

Personally I don’t think SDSL is needed at least not for us. Download bandwidth is far more important than upload bandwidth. 100mb/100mb would be a waste we would rarely use then much upload. My concern is children can bring in mobile phones with faster internet then our SDSL site and end users come into school and see we have a site connection x10 slower than their home connection. That gives a very poor impression.

 

Although I do acknowledge the home connections are not 100% suitable for schools. I just don’t understand why schools cannot have as good or better download connections as what people can get at home. In fact right now I would settle for better connections the you can get on a mobile phone To me 10mb is just not good enough in todays world. 10mb is way behind the times.

 

Or another way to look at it. When you have 100mb now at home and have had 50mb for years at home. Upgrading your school connection to 1c1n 10mb hardly feels like an upgrade. It feels very outdated.

 

EDIT: Mavhc we have the same here. Our 1c1n emails are still not fixed and the call has been open for months.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Pottsey