Any reccomendations for school broadband providers

[IT_Man_Dan]

Morning all,

 

We currently get our broadband through our LEA and for various reasons are strongly considering getting our own solution in.

 

I'm thinking a 100mb leased line should do the job. We have our own TMG on site that we can use for the filtering and have Sophos Antivirus.

 

Can anyone suggest a good provider?

Also are there any more considerations I need to make before pursuing this?

 

Thanks

Dan

[glennda]

M247 Top notch at my last place was pukka - @psillars

 

And yeah ditch WSGFL its awful best thing I did for my old school!

 

EDIT: If I remember the SLA correctly you have to give them at least 6 months notice if you want to cancel mid term - although it is only a year contract with them.

Edited July 17, 2012 by glennda

[Quackers]

We jumped from the LEA to Zen, we get ADSL backup for free if you have a PSTN line onsite to take it, and well its Zen, actual Tech people at the end of a phone and not script monkeys....

[glennda]

Your are right next to an exchange (well 0.5 miles away) which isn't that badly provided - see here.

 

You might even be able to get a decent EFM connection which will be a lot cheaper.

[twin--turbo]

PM Me your postcode.

 

Rob

[Haptic]

If you're in the market for renewal pricing for Broadband provision (including leased lines, FTTC, SIP trunking etc) feel free to contact us.

 

We find our prices are far more competitive than BT, also with shorter contract terms (usually 3 years vs BT's 5 )

 

Couple that with Fortinet firewall solutions and the prospect suddenly becomes better than most BT/LEA renewal quotes.

 

Joe @ CPLTD

[glennda]

 

Couple that with Fortinet firewall solutions and the prospect suddenly becomes better than most BT/LEA renewal quotes.

 

Having worked with a few of these i wouldn't put them down as a selling point - they are possibly the most annoying Firewalls around!

 

Toby

[sonofsanta]

We went with Vaioni about 18 months ago and it's been just dandy - good pricing on them and never had any problems.

 

I may or may not have a smug smile on my face when I get circulars from county about problems with their RBC.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Well we are here @ SchoolsBroadband

 

Not sure what Glenda is on about ref Fortinet. They are brilliant firewalls. We've been using them for years.

[glennda]

Perhaps i've just been unlucky - they are ok when they work - configuring them is a nightmare when you compare to items such as Watchguards etc

[Soulfish]

Another recommendation for M247. Our new leased line with EFM backup has just gone live. Got it sorted in extra quick time and everyone I've dealt with has been great

 

We manage our own firewall however (Palo Alto PA-4020) with Smoothwall filtering (SWG-1200's - 3 of them atm ) for the best of both worlds.

[synaesthesia]

I'd like to chip in a recommendation for Schools Broadband based on the excellent service had by several schools in my area. Fortinet is easy to work with and the built in VPN gubbins are damn handy. ADSL backup costs an extra £nearlybuggerall because ADSL costs £nearlybuggerall anyway.

[SchoolsBroadband]

aww shucks you'll make me blush @synaesthesia

 

Thanks for the kind words

[glennda]

I think you must have been. We have nearly 1000 installed with very few issues. Sure they are not super easy to setup as you need to know what you are doing.

 

This is one of the reasons we sell them as tpart of a fully managed service so you can use us and our engineers are Fortinet qualified to configure all your security for you as were experts in that field.

 

Don't get me wrong Watchguard and others such as Smoothwall are good too but to imply Fortinets are unreliable isn't right or fair I think.

 

Branch office VPN seems completely unreliable with them (and its not the net link between I've tested that) perhaps it could just be the 15 or so I've worked with.

 

They are fairly straight forward to setup - but then i find that with most firewalls when you understand what you are doing.

[twin--turbo]

We use a mix of Draytek, MicroTik and Cisco depending on the application.

 

Rob

[glennda]

Hi again Glenda,

 

this still sounds very odd. We do lots of Fortigates with site to site VPN setups. These are to Fortigates and to other vendors such as Cisco, Juniper etc. We have no problems what so ever.

 

It sounds as though your tunnel keep alive settings when the keys re-hash are not set to be the same at both sides. This can cause tunnels to go down early.

 

How does this sound? Why not give us a call and I'll get one of my Fortinet qualified engineers to set your VPN's up correctly. Completely FOC. Can't say fairer than that eh?

 

Dave

 

Dave - they are setup correctly - I've put a Watchguard at times into the same router at both ends (different ip's) - watchguards stay up fortinets don't - its not that they are constantly going down but they need restarting every week/10 days or so to bring back the vpn's which would rule out it being the re-key as its far to long a period to be those. So theres something pete tong with the devices. We have them plugged into devices which can be remotely reset and that fixes them. But the sooner they are out the better in my opinion but its not my choice.

 

Its each to there own i guess

[glennda]

Would you like to send me a debug of what happens when the tunnels go down ? PM me with the info and I'll get my engineers and if need be Fortinet to check it out. Also what software version are you using at both ends of the VPN ? I'll check the release notes and see if their are any known bugs in that version of firmware. We are on 4.3 at the moment rolled out to everywhere and it's solid as a rock. V5 is released I September. Mmmmmm V5

 

don't worry they are being replaced over the next month

[jamescole1978]

I've had some dealings with Fluid Data who don't shout about schools Broadband but do cover a number of schools. Contract terms are incredibly flexible (down to 3 months) and they do a whole range of different solutions.

 

Max Stoner was the account manager there. All seemed very efficient and well priced.

 

for what it is worth.

[BTLocalBusiness]

Hi IT Man Dan

 

I look after Education sector in the South East for BT (including West Sussex). We can provide leased line 100meg (EFM only goes up to 10meg and thats even if its available) and we also provide Fortinet via our partners BT Inet. If you email me your postcode I can give you a quote on the leased line and get the ball rolling for a Fortinet quote. We are Cisco partners also is that what you are using there presently?

 

Regards

 

Kris

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi IT Man Dan

 

I look after Education sector in the South East for BT (including West Sussex). We can provide leased line 100meg (EFM only goes up to 10meg and thats even if its available) and we also provide Fortinet via our partners BT Inet. If you email me your postcode I can give you a quote on the leased line and get the ball rolling for a Fortinet quote. We are Cisco partners also is that what you are using there presently?

 

Regards

 

Kris

 

Actually EFM can go up to 35Mbit via BT Wholesale on an 8pair solution. Talk Talk wholesale also do a 4 pair EFM going up to 16Mbit too

[huxlow]

Not sure brilliant is a word we would use!! Troublesome and incapable of doing the job is our experience.

[RTFM]

We have a BT Leased Line and cant complain at all about it, they are really good and the service has been faultless.

[psillars]

Just to be complete, don't forget we can provide all of the above as well