SchoolsBroadband

Hello everyone, thank you for your kind comments. @lmrogers if you need any more information or I can help at all then do let me know. We now have about 1,500 schools using our services across the country who take our fully managed Internet, filtering and security services. We've also invested a lot in our network with additional Fortinet & Lightspeed clusters as well as some very big and expensive Cisco kit. Other news we have direct fibre into Google (one of a few ISP's to do so) so YouTube and other Google services are lightening fast. We've also just had new peering agreements setup with Microsoft and Apple to further improve connectivity and latency to high bandwidth destinations on the Internet. There's a lot going on in the industry at the moment regarding safeguarding, technology, speeds and we try our very best to keep on top of it to offer you a top service so we differentiate ourselves from a normal non education specific ISP. If you've any questions please do let me know. Thanks Dave

not all of them are 3 node clusters but the 3 latest clusters are. We've also upgraded the Fortinets to new FortiOS (there's new features on there for you to try) and added an additional 4 x Fortigates and also new Cisco 9000 series ASR routers to increase capacity. Dave

Hello folks, sorry for the inconvenience caused we had Lightspeed filter 14 cluster fail. This was fixed by engineers in a touch over 15 minutes. All other customers such as Sted on filter 5 were not affected Thanks Dave

If they are talking about data flowing between their network and a 3rd party ISP (such as ourselves) then data can of course be encrypted by use of IPSEC or SSL VPN's which is common practise and other LA's allow this to happen. Again just scare tactics. LA connections as such are not encrypted. Some adhere to PSN standards although schools don't actually need to be PSN compliant. The LA needs to be PSN compliant if 3rd party user on a different ISP connects into it. If an LA allows remote connections via another ISP (e.g. for home workers) then they can do exactly the same thing for schools to access applications on their LAN such as payroll etc. Dave Dave

This is pretty bad practise but we've seen it time and time again, normally from the Local Authorities saying things such as "if you leave our broadband provision then the police will be at your door if there's a filtering / safety issue." Complete rubbish of course. Perhaps any filtering company saying such things regarding Ofsted could point each school in the direction of where the safeguarding and requirements are rather than just spout about it on the phone? We sell on giving the customer the correct information so they can make an informed decision. I've no time for scare selling and certainly we'd never do that.... Thanks Dave

Hi Kev, sure I'll send you a PM. But in a nutshell gigabit bearers cost a lot more than 100Mbit, content filtering licences cost a lot more for secondary schools than primary schools and you're on a 3 year deal. The cheap offering we have is for primary schools only and is 5 year term, not 3 year and is a special deal for us from our carrier partner. There are quite a few other differences too. Thanks Dave

definitely. If your Internet connectivity contracts are up for renewal too then we could do MPLS with all the filtering you require so no need for a site to site VPN, we can do it all at network level. If you're staying put with the LA's internet for both sites the Lightspeed, smoothwall or Iboss should do the trick. As we do Lightspeed in the cloud though our prices should be very competitive rather than buying the boxes onsite and paying per user. Let me know if you'd like a quite other than that good luck Dave

Try a single laptop plugged directly into the router also if we are your isp (as I suspect this may be the case from what you say) then we can do tests from the router onsite into our core network so if there's still a problem even when us testing then we know you're not at fault and we either need to provide you with a new router (unlikely) or raise a fault with our carrier. If it's is us then pm the case id if you've raised one. Thanks Dave

PM'd ..........

a2c?????

That's not a lot of time for schools to find something else?

it's you to ISP. We have no control sometimes as to what happens on the Internet once traffic leaves our network. If you took a Microsoft Express Route interconnect then we could also do an SLA all the way into Microsoft. We may do this if enough schools want it, but its not cheap. Dave

Thanks for pointing that out. We've just moved web servers so that may be the issue. Leased lines should have a 99.999% SLA Dave

you'd be surprised at how little a 100Mbit leased line costs now. We can do them from £4,500pa near enough nationwide and that includes firewall and content filtering. Add onto that an ADSL or FTTC backup and you're talking about £5kpa. Dave

Despite doing the last slot (the graveyard shift!) Craig really enjoyed it so thanks for having us Dave

you can do this if your ISP supports VPLS (we do). That allows you to use the same VLAN across multiple sites which can be useful specifically for certain applications or just segregation of traffic such as CCTV which you've mentioned. yes think about broadcast domains but it is possible to stop this happening when used in conjunction with the thing that glues the two circuits together. I'd need to double check but I think we can do this with our hosted Fortigates. Dave

Hi Michael, we can definitely do this VPLS (layer 2) or MPLS (layer 3). If you wanted a Wave then depending on which carriers are available we can probably also do DWDM but this is quite an expensive option if either end is not already on net with that carrier. Why not pm me the postcodes and speeds you want and I can get you a price? The 25km distance is down to the technology used of BT Ethernet Access Direct or Virgin Media Ethernet Extension products and the cost of them vary on distance up to 25km but is for all purposes a direct fibre. Using MPLS / VPLS takes direct fibre back to the local telephone exchanges and then uses the carrier(s) national network to "glue" the two end points together. This is how we do VPLS / MPLS for large academy trusts which are based in completely geographic areas of the UK. We also do businesses too so do send me a PM Thanks Dave

or maybe not anymore now Bale has scored :-/

you should see our graphs. Well of 12Gbit being used at the moment and rising but we've lots of spare capacity

traffic levels are up about 105% above normal for us!!!

Hello, we are all in with Lightspeed filtering, FTTC broadband, phone line, email, web hosting etc etc with no per user filtering from £2,600pa which should be all you need for a small primary school. If this school is part of a bigger MAT we can also link all your school sites together over an MPLS / VPLS WAN at not extra cost. I'll send you over a PM. You could also check out opendns which does filtering FOC. Not recommended as there is no reporting but if you want cheap and free then you could use that. Thanks Dave

When Apple or Microsoft release large updates we see a huge spike in bandwidth usage which normally lasts for a good half day. Fortunately we have the upstream capacity to deal with it but I suspect many LA's don't so it could affect all schools on their network. If you have your own firewall with layer 7 application control (such as the Fortinets we use) then you can do your own throttling to apple or microsoft or even from apple devices as the Fortigates are clever enough to know what type of devices are connecting to the network it protects. It is also a good idea to do the caching server as per other people suggest on this thread. Good luck Dave

HI @nathan, i don't believe so although I'm off work at the moment. If you don't feel somethings been dealt with in a timely fashion please follow the escalation path and speak with Carole Mawson who is our support manager and she'll look into it for you. Thanks David

I'd say no. They're not prevent duty compliant which all schools need to be as per @Oaktech ref reporting in particular.

hi @jertsy if you can PM me your school and get one of my senior engineers to take a look at it for you if they're not on it already. Can you also let me know the case id please? Thanks Dave