SchoolsBroadband

Hi Jason, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the prices now available when not using an LEA supplied Internet connection. Wholesale costs have just come down again last month so 200Mbit with nationwide availability will definitely be sub £10,000 We've migrated well over 1,000 schools from LEA connections to our own network and you can normally keep your IP address range you currently use or we can allocate you a new one. We've also a lot of secondary schools use our service in Oxfordshire so have plenty for you to speak with if required. I'll send you a PM and we can give you some indicative quotes pretty quickly. Thanks Dave

Yes all Lightspeed issues resolved and the impacted customers have now had nearly 2 weeks normal service. See the filter 11 thread. Dave

Thanks for the positive feedback. Our stance on issues has always been to be as upfront and honest about everything and not just push them under the carpet'. Glad to hear you're now back to normal and happy with the service since we've done all the extra work for filter 11 customers. Dave

Hello again, I'm away for the week at the moment but have forwarded this onto another director so we get back in touch and sort these issues out for you. Moving over to different filter clusters can be a bit of a pain as there's lots of work to re do but we will get it sorted for you. Thanks Dave

Well proof will be how we are after Tuesday @MJTayloronline The vast majority of customers haven't had any problems whatsoever and any issue that was with filter 11 has now been fixed as everything has been rock solid for the past week. Although a few customers have had a rough ride due to filter 11 issues the vast majority still have not and are very happy with our service. Feel free to PM me or give me a call if you've any concerns specifically. Thanks Dave

It doesn't do dynamic but its still a damn good filter.

standard BT SLA on FTTC connections is 24 hour response with 48 hour fix. This can be improved to 7 hour response 24 hour fix if you pay for FTTC enhanced care. However remember to also increase the care level package on the underlying phone line too which you'd need to put to care level 4 if you did this without going through an ISP such as us. EoFTTC comes with all of the above as standard and also guaranteed speeds. Your ISP may also add other enhancements or service credits (as we do) should any issues occur with the line. SLA's on Fibre leased lines are normally 6 hour fix. Thanks Dave

hi @synaesthesia if this is one of our lines then you can monitor your speeds via the portal which is portal.talk-straight.com Thanks Dave

on the whole we've got to the bottom of the issue and are working with Lightspeed. We've added a lot more server resource to increase capacity (not that we were under capacity to start off with) so you'll all see an improvement. Last night one server has been semi taken off line as we've managed to get it in a certain state where we've seen the issues but Lightspeed can still get onto the unit. Lot's of work to do still but we don't see the issues happening as they have going forward hence stability for the vast majority of customers. Thanks for your patience and we'll keep you all updated. Dave

Hi @whs1000, this isn't done by default but is something we can do if required. We supply some schools with a completely separate broadband line from an alternate carrier for VoIP in case their is ever an issue with their primary connection. Thanks Dave

You will do @fiza. As I'm sure you'll appreciate ticket numbers are rather high at the moment. Can you PM me your email address and I'll get someone else to do it for you if you want them sooner? Thanks Dave

Hi @fiza, I suspect it's because your own school isn't using us yet. If you email [email protected] then she'll get you added to the notification lists. Thanks Dave

Thanks @synaesthesia, unlike some of our competitors we are always upfront about things and tell the truth about the issues we have rather than try to do cover ups. Things do go wrong and in our opinion it's how you respond to them so we keep people as updated as informed as we can. I and other directors will also personally be seeing affected schools to go over whats happened, why, what we've done about it and what can be done going forward. There's a lot to explain as there's been a lot of different things happening which unfortunately have compounded themselves at the same time. Be rest assured I hate giving what we and our customers think is bad service. it really does tear me up inside that some of our customers are unhappy. We can't flick a switch to immediately make you happy again as that comes over time and we will do everything we can for those who have been affected to get us to gain back their trust. We will get there and soon. Dave

Hi @fiza, filter 9 has actually been fine today it was the same issue with filter 10 that we'd seen on 11 and 9 in the past. We're about to go onto a conf call with the lead tech @ Lightspeed who is in Austin to further get to the bottom of things. Lightspeed too are taking this very seriously and we can't escalate any higher with them. We will get to the bottom of this. Thanks Dave

Hi all, we are doing everything we can to sort these issues out. Please be aware the issues are we've had with filters have been out of our direct control. The issues also aren't affecting everyone and although there are a lot of complaints on here the vast majority of our customers still have had a fully functioning service for months if not years. We are doing everything we possibly can to get to them bottom of this and will keep you all updated. I can't thank you all enough for the patience you've showed. Dave

Hello, yes you can use Fortigate only if you want and the traffic doesn't route through the Lightspeed devices. Dave

I'm presuming you're talking about us here By the by some carriers allow a change of ownership. E.g. if you were with Virgin Media direct the we can move you over to Virgin Media Wholesale and then convert the line to one of our national Ethernet circuits. When using a BT EAD based leased line circuit this just isn't possible knowing how contacts work between ISP's and carriers. Dave

Due to Lightspeeds being a Layer 2 bridge all traffic does need to go via them unless we can put some services (e.g. VoIP) on a completely separate VLAN to bypass them. I've PM'd you on your other points. Thanks Dave

Sorry to hear that @nathan. I think you've been rather unfortunate today

hello @whs1000 that's not quite right. We had 2 x physical hardware failures of filter 11. That physical filter has been changed 2 times in the past few weeks. We have added another server into filter cluster 11 and 12. This cluster is now 11,12 and 13. Adding a dedicated parent server that only does reporting and policy takes load off the child server which we saw crashed sometimes on high load. Hence why this went to a 3 server cluster. This weekend we built another 3 server cluster and have put some high user customers onto this which were on the filter 11 cluster and will be moving more over tonight also following the big traffic spike due to Windows / Office updates today (we did an additional 3.5Gbit just to Microsoft this morning). It's likely we will purchase a further 3 cluster server and we're also looking into a new load balanced solution (rather than clusters) to improve throughput and resiliency (this option was not available to us when we originaly rolled out Lightspeed). On top of that we've just signed off best part of half a million Cisco ASR upgrades and more carrier grade Fortigates too. Quite a lot is happening as we want you to have a fast stable service. Regards David

Hi @nathan, filter 9 is up and running and has been since it had the issue some hours ago. Can you call the help desk as you may have another issue elsewhere as I can see dozens of schools using that filter at the moment when I'm logged into the box real time now. Regards David

@tj2419 investigations are ongoing but we believe it to be load based hence the new clusters being put in quickly. We're going to be moving a number of heavy school customers onto the newly built cluster tonight on top of ones we've already moved off. There's a lot more work (and money being spent) going on top of what we've already done. Dave

PM'd......

@Spence_101 please email [email protected] and she'll add you to the update list. Dave

@synaesthesia we'll be sending out full comms as per usual. It's not been a great week for our effected customers and we sincerely apologise for that and we're doing everything we can to put things right. There's a lot of new equipment already installed with more to come too. The effected clusters are stable again with normal service resumed following a short issue this morning. The vast majority of our customers have been absolutely fine with no issues whatsoever and have been for years. We must do better though and we will. Dave