SchoolsBroadband

The largest we've put into a school so far is a 1Gbit which we still thought was overkill but the customer insisted. We're start to see the norm becoming 200Mbit on a 1Gbit bearer for secondary schools though and have just done quite a few 500Mbit on a 1Gbit bearer in London. Standard Ethernet circuits currently go up to 10Gbit with both BT (Ethernet Access Direct / EAD) and Virgin Media (Ethernet Extension). We can also use Dark Fibre and Waves where required which can in theory go as fast as the optics and repeaters you put on the end. Thanks Dave

Thanks for the recommendations @sparkeh, @Blue_Cookeh, @Jawloms, @JordanT91 @ryoung, we look after probably a dozen secondary schools in Oxfordshire already and have done for many years. We've got quite a few re-signing with us as we speak. More than happy to give you a quote. I know we can be very competitive on price but more importantly the use of our Lightspeed Education based content filtering and Fortigate dedicated virtual firewall really sets our service apart from all others giving you resilient devices as standard and doing everything in the cloud rather than having your boxes on site so no capital expenditure costs. Just an annual rental for the service which is fully managed but also gives you the ability to make changes yourself. There's also no per user cost. Just one annual site licence so you have fixed costs also. I'll send you a PM. We've lots of happy customers on here as you can tell who will vouch for us Thanks Dave

yes the sooner the better, particularly if you're upgrading to a full fibre leased line and don't have any fibre into the building already as that can takes months to complete.

Absolutely I couldn't agree more with that. I remember seeing one particular company at BETT last year (one of the list above) who guaranteed they could do a full Gbit throughput with all UTM functionality turned on scanning all user traffic for a secondary school for one of their standard devices. The conversation didn't go much further as they were talking rubbish....

RRP is £5 per device pa. However I can probably give you a bit of a discount Send me a PM if you'd like a quote Dave

As a UTM and NGFW the Fortinet kicks ass on all of those listed. In an education environment though Smoothwall and Lightspeed are much easier to use with regards to content filtering. It's why we use Fortinet as the firewall and Lightspeed as the filter as together we believe it's the best solution on the market. Dave

Genius Thanks for choosing us @Blue_Cookeh

The governors are responsible for the choice of broadband and ultimately accountable. The DFE says though that so long as your governors choose "an RBC or recognised educational Internet Service provider" then you'll be fine. I'm pretty sure this guidance is on the DFE and NEN's website. No idea what they are on about ref Ofcom licence fee. You don't have to pay a licence fee to Ofcom to have broadband. The only time you ever would is if you use an outdoor point to point wireless connection and that's only £50 a year I think. I generally recommend customers to ignore the scaremongering from the LA. Load of rubbish! Thanks Dave P.S I hope you're considering moving to us ;-)

Phew would be a royal pain if you didn't! Thumbs up from me

just to be clear I have no idea when Broadband 4 created their logo compared to ours. We have had nothing to do with Broadband 4 other than (and I'd need to double check) we spoke with them in the past about becoming a re-seller of ours but they decided to make their own service instead. On top of that we offer EoFTTC for the prices they do FTTC. EoFTTC gives guaranteed speeds and a higher SLA than standard FTTC. We also give the option of your own Fortigate Virtual firewall so you can change your own security policies and not have to call us on top of the Lightspeed filtering all as standard. I've also heard you have to use a proxy for all their Lightspeed (whether HTTP or HTTPS) which personally I don't recommend but that's up for you to decide. (my apologies if I am incorrect on this, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong). Happy to give you a quote @rpain if you'd like. Thanks Dave

Absolutely. Put some infrastructure in your ISP's data centre or use their virtual server / IaaS platform to put everything on. This puts less strain on your leased line if you hosted everything at one site for the WAN to connect back to. Dave

hi @karldenton, we already do this for many schools. Even though a leased line costs more than a standard Virgin business connection you really do get what you pay for. You may also want to consider EoFTTC if you've any smaller primary schools and you're looking to share data over the WAN as this gives dedicated speeds as leased lines do up to a point. Quite happy to give advice or a quote as you're not based too far away from us. Thanks Dave

probably not no. O2 don't structure their data like that.

with the likes of O2 and Vodafone once you hit a certain limit then the traffic should be automatically throttled so you can't rack up a huge bill. I'm sure that Ofcom imposed a "bill shock" clause which could come to effect in your case. I understand why your current provider may only be able to do it the next day as they'll get their data log files daily so if they go over it in that day then they won't until the next if they are buying pay as you use data. We are an O2 Wholesale partner and if you want a 5Gig data limit then that's what you get and you can't go over it. If you hit the limit a text is automatically sent to the sim card in the dongle altering you of hitting your limit. Dave

Yes we've been waiting to find out what Ofcom are actually going to do for a while. In the next 2 - 3 years time I expect to see wholesale access to BT's dark fibre which will likely enable providers like us to offer faster services at cheaper prices and allow us to be more innovative, particularly when creating WAN's for multi academy trusts. Watch this space though I'll advise once we know more from our Openreach account manager and from what I read in the press and at events with other Telco's. Thanks Dave

FTTC or EoFTTC would probably do the trick if you're on an enabled street cabinet. We've moved over a hundred schools from SWGFL to our network so do let me know if you'd like a quote as we've many happy customers here on Edugeek. Thanks Dave

We've had quotes for this in the past and I'm sure we were looking at 30k a box. Can't remember the specs though as it was about 18 months ago. I think exclusive-networks.co.uk may sell them if you want to give them a call? Thanks Dave

we've had quite a few schools leave BGFL and not have to pay anything to access the information despite threats and letters

or another idea why not host your servers in your ISP's data centres where they'll be on bigger pipes which has UPS and diesel generator as standard? or use an IaaS platform instead? Dave

In my experience that's quite low for usage on a 100Mbit line with that many devices and pupils. We see nearer to 70Mbit on average. You should know that most suppliers can upgrade you to a 100/1Gbit mid-term (so long as its after 12 months) if you re-sign for a new 3 year period. There may be a charge for doing so (should be sub £2k) but this can often outweigh being on a 100/1Gbit for say 2 years and paying for the excess rental charge over and above a 100/100. We do this as standard so do let me know if you'd like a quote Thanks David

I've never heard of Broadband For Schools (unless you mean us as Schools Broadband?). There are plenty of threads on RM and also the SWGFL who RM supply in the regional forums. We've moved plenty of schools over from the Staffordshire LA already so will send you a PM if we haven't been in touch already. Thanks Dave

We moved to One Drive and Sharepoint storage about a year or so ago. Best thing we ever did. All our Windows server now does is Active Directory and that's it although I'm sure the nail will be in the coffin for it shortly too. We've a 100Mbit leased line which is more than capable of looking after the 50 or so staff we have on site. We rarely get anywhere near maxing the line out. Dave

Hi @Mr_Jiminy, a BT EAD fibre link would do the job perfectly. It'd also allow the primary school to "piggy back" from the secondary schools Internet connection which is generally faster than that of a primary schools. Thanks Dave

Talk talk partner event on the Wednesday I can't miss unfortunately not doing Saturday as I've been in Mexico with Fortinet all week and the Mrs is demanding I spend at least weekend time with her and my daughter! See you there though and catch up for that coffee.. Dave

Don't forget the chocolate bars too! If anyone wants to meet me personally I'm there Thursday and Friday. Can't wait to see you all Dave