Average broadband usage in your school

[AndiMarv]

This is my first post here so please excuse me if I err in some way

 

I am having a small battle with our telecom suppliers over how much broadband my school consumes.

The school is an independent boarding school with 420 kids and 150 staff, we are rural so broadband connectivity is limited and we have three bonded ADSL lines in place.

Each of the bonded lines has a fair use limit of 30GB on it, so 90GB in total for the month.

We are frequently using 600GB - 900GB per month and the ISP are trying to tell me this is quite unusual and there must be a problem.

 

I have been using Microsoft forefront threat management gateway for our filtering as it can be included in our EES agreement and comes in substantially cheaper than other filters I have seen.

We have a subscription to the service which updates internet filtering lists on the forefront and have blocked anything malicious but are generally easy going when it comes to access to iPlayer or youtube.

(I tried a complete internet lock-down with nothing explicitly educational getting through but there was such an uprising that the SLT told me to open everything up again)

 

My question to the community is how much broadband do other schools get through in a month?

I dont think our current usage is excessive, but I am beginning to doubt myself as the telecom people are insisting that amount of data is excessive.

 

I hope I haven't waffled on too long ^_^

[Mr.Ben]

I wouldn't say that it's excessive, given the fact you are a boarding school - I am assuming that your boarders have access to the internet after hours.

 

iPlayer Data usage

 

The details here say that a Video, streamed in HD will use 225MB per hour - so thats 4000 hours being watched each month, or 9.5 (approx) hours of video being watched per month per student.

 

That may seem a little high still, but its worked out on 900GB and when you take out your general Internet Usage/Downloads I think it's reasonable.

[saundersmatt]

I've just had a quick look at our traffic logs. We're receiving on average 20GB/day which would equate to around 400GB/Month.

 

Bear in mind though that we are not a boarding school, so your numbers should be higher that our. I don't think your useage is excessive.

 

Matt

[X-13]

Wait what... 30GB data cap on a business line? Is this even a thing?

 

 

Perhaps you should remind them you're a boarding school.

 

Then slap them for being silly.

[DMcCoy]

Looking at an example school here, I'm seeing around 20GB during the day over a 100Mb link, 1000+ users (not concurrent of course but up to 300 at once maybe).

 

Probably around what you would expect, but not what an ISP would expect on a normal home/business connection.

[AndiMarv]

I have tried to play the 'but we're a school' card with them and that didn't seem to make much difference.

 

I am reassured to hear that this usage isn't crazy and beyond the realm of possibility - I think it has been something of a blessing that we were throttled though, on the back of this my Business Manager has authorised the installation of a leased line

 

Happy days to come - hopefully!

[AngryTechnician]

We use an average of 178GB/month, and while we have similar staff/pupil numbers to you, we are a prep school with no boarding. Your usage does not seem unusual at all to me.

 

If your ISP really is putting a 30GB cap on a business line, and haven't put you on a residential tariff by accident, they are idiots. Our single business VDSL line (40Mbps/10Mbps) has a 1000GB monthly cap.

[Mr.Ben]

If your ISP really is putting a 30GB cap on a business line.....they are idiots.

 

I concur!

[localzuk]

Considering 4 of us in our house use 120GB+ each month, 900GB a month for a boarding school? That's completely reasonable!

[SchoolsBroadband]

It's quite interesting to read what you all use. We find the following is normal for all of the schools using our services.

 

Primary Schools - 65GIG per month

Secondary Schools - 700GIG per month

 

This is going up month on month though as more lessons are using the Internet to deliver content and research materials.

 

To reduce bandwidth have you considered using a proxy / trans proxy on site? Primary schools in particular often use the same websites over and over again so having a local copy can speed up browsing and also reduce your over all bandwidth consumption.

 

Dave

[Duke5A]

It's quite interesting to read what you all use. We find the following is normal for all

To reduce bandwidth have you considered using a proxy / trans proxy on site? Primary schools in particular often use the same websites over and over again so having a local copy can speed up browsing and also reduce your over all bandwidth consumption.

 

We're a six site school district (not a boarding school, but just a regular public school) with about 4,000 students and the kids will use about 35GB a day, and staff will use 20GB.

 

Squid might be a good option for you. I run two Squid proxy servers, one for staff and one for students. It'll do caching and you can block some of the more non-educational traffic intensive sites like Pandora and Vimeo for students while keeping it open for staff.

[AndiMarv]

I am hugely relieved to read the comments everyone has left.

 

I think until our leased line comes into place I will simply ignore the moaning from the bonded line resellers as it seems they have provided a clearly insufficient product to a modern school in the first place.

 

Thank you to everyone

[dave.81]

Slightly smaller boarding school to you and we use 600GB+ per month with easy on a single 6mb ADSL line. Expecting this to jump massively when our 30mb connection is installed.