Opinions of these leased line providers please?

[mrbios]

Global AXS

Eclipse.net

Schoolsbroadband

Star

 

Can anyone pass on any experiences, recommendations, horror stories of these 4 companies? or recommend any other companies they've been particularly pleased with?

 

We're looking to move away from SWGFL as our contract ends in April, looking for something with a good SLA, backup connection and most important of all, cheaper than the rip off swgfl!

 

 

Additionally, and I ask this knowing what most people will answer: Recommendations for a filtering solution? I know most will say smoothwall, and I've had a nice demonstration by them a year ago as well as some prices but I need comparisons, opinions etc. As we'll need to get multiple companies to come in and present their services to us for both the internet connection and the filtering.

[sonofsanta]

We've been with Vaioni for coming on two years now and they've been fine and dandy, and good value to boot. Downtime has been minimal, and certainly much less than I've ever seen with an RBC or when we were with RM.

 

Filtering... I followed the crowd on that one, sorry, so not much to add there.. Although I'm delighted I did, FWIW. Fortigate do filtering as well, I think, and Vaioni can offer that, and Bloxx usually spam me with post - a few on here could offer thoughts on them, I think.

[TheCrust]

We moved to Eclipse.net over the summer.

 

They're part of the KCOM group, who are behind our old RBC (EMBC), so we joked that we were moving off network by not moving off network, but they offered us a better SLA than emPSN could and the costs weren't too bad.

 

The installation was carried out in a fast, efficient, no-fuss manner and we've not had any issues at all. OK, it's early days, but so far I'm quite pleased with them.

[MatthewL]

Virgin?

[lordasb]

we looked at virgin but have gone with updata.net had option of linking into the local feed and a reduent back haul to a london data center.

[glennda]

Global AXS AKA M247 Ltd are very good. I put them in at my last place and they are very competitive.

 

M247 can also incorporate a Smoothwall cost into the monthly fee as well. What size of school are you? What speed leased line? Distance from the exchange as you could also look at EFM which gives you a similar SLA ran over 4 copper pairs at up to 10mb for a fraction for the leased line cost.

[pantscat]

Another vote for Vaioni here...