SchoolsBroadband

We've loads of customers using Lightspeed MDM and include it FOC year 1 in all of our broadband contracts. It's a great tool and the latest version is really easy to use. let me know if you'd like a quote. Thanks Dave

Hi @southhamster if you let me know the details of the schools I'll let you know what speeds they can have. We've upgraded quite a few primary schools from SWGFL ADSL onto full 100Mbit leased lines for not a ridiculous amount more than they were already paying and its vastly changed what they can now do with their IT. Sounds like your schools are just on a standard ADSL 2+ line which is some distance from the telephone exchange if they can only get 6Mbit. Dave

We'll certainly be there so long as it doesn't go via ANME as Rick won't allow us to go to any of their meetings at present. Happy to help fund it too. Dave

Hello, if you're looking for any sponsors then we'd be happy to help. Do send me a PM if interested. Thanks Dave

My view is that we (as the ISP industry for the education sector) should be able to monitor any user and what they are searching for by default anyway (not just by IP address). This should be simple to do and put the power in the hands of those at the school that required it (e-safety officer etc) but also be able to get detailed information for the relevant law enforcement agencies and authorities when required. As a business we should advise on what we deem to be best practise but give our customers the tools to tailor their systems to reflect their individual e-safety policies. What's more I believe all education ISP's (Grids and LA's included) should do all of the above as standard as an absolute minimum and at an inclusive cost. Not have it as an additional extra they should charge for as it should be in by default. Their are some LA's, Grids and ISP's that have fantastic filtering systems that does the above by default but some that don't at all and in my opinion it's dangerous not to be able to do so. We've caught all sorts of stuff (we look after well over 1,000 schools) and if we hadn't have been using the systems we do (Lightspeed and Fortinet) then I know some of it would have been missed. No system is perfect but in my opinion there should at least by a minimum standard. As to who should set this is debatable but it should come top down from government and I suspect we shall see that in the not so distant future. Just my thoughts. Dave

That is really really bad

Hello again, For the Fortigate box that's a 100% yes as this is how Fortinet licence / provide the service. Cases / Tickets do have a priority depending on what they are (although wireless not working shouldn't be lower than unblocking a site). I have an idea. Perhaps we could offer you and Ken (if he's still there) a free training session with our technical team including lunch etc at our HQ. We can host about 16 people on one go so if there are any other network managers that would like to come with you then great the more the merrier? Also if there's some functionality or something you need that you don't have at the moment then please speak with Craig your account manager who can then engage our Technical Consultants (probably Luke) and we'll propose a solution. Luke's FCNSP qualified so really knows his stuff. Hopefully the above can help you out with everything you need to know about the products we sell and go over the more technical issues you are having with a qualified expert. Before you say it, yes I'd love all of our engineers to be FCNSP qualified but that takes a lot of time for everyone to achieve it as its not an easy qualification to get (equivalent of Cisco CCNP) Thanks David

Hi Fazza, we're not scared of showing people bandwidth usage if anything we really want you to know what your are using. If we haven't given you this information then I'd be rather disappointed with us. Ref the portal, the full portal has only just been released in the last few weeks. We did have a beta portal a long time ago which didn't really see the light of day after feedback from some beta testers. When you mean portal though do you mean login to the Fortigate (which you should have by default) or the new bandwidth monitoring / case raising portal at portal.talk-straight.com ? (in fact in writing this I've been told this has now been done) If you want more granular view of protocols used, user use of applications and have a really granular view of all data that traverses your Internet connection etc etc then you need to purchase Fortianalyzer or setup your own syslog server to download the logs from the Fortigate real time and run your own reporting. See Network Security Reporting, Logging and Analyzing | Fortinet for more info. This is available as an onsite appliance or a VM image. If you like as you sound a little aggrieved we may even be able to set you up on our hosted version for a trial FOC if you like? You can get your website stats from the Lightspeed interface and run as many reports as you want (I'm presuming you have this though and not an onsite Fortigate box). Thanks Dave

Agreed the 200D is a beast of an onsite box.

@mthomas08 we have a virtualised Fortigate UTM / Firewall with Lightspeed filtering as standard. No capex costs just ongoing which at RRP is £3,900pa with unlimited user licences on a 100Mbit line. That includes all UTM renewals, support contracts, management AND you get a resilient pair rather than a single box. If you bought all the kit together and then paid for all the licences you'd have to spend about £15k up front about £8kpa just for licences, support and UTM renewals. Lightpseed is an awesome education specific filter. Fortinet provide the fastest UTM / firewalls in the world. It's a great combo. I hear IBoss is also good as is Smoothwall but we stuck with Fortigate / Ligthspeed combo for some very good reasons. Thanks Dave

Thanks for the birthday wishes @mrbios So I've double checked with the NOC team today first thing and both of you and @Fazza were maxing your lines. We have no speed issues nor are any of our NNI's into our carriers (both of you are using different carriers btw) are anywhere near hitting their limits. We're seeing more and more secondary schools take 200Mbit and above as standard now. Perhaps its time for an upgrade for you guys as you've been on less than that for best part of 3 years? @Fazza your comments are completely incorrect ref nodes. We do 100% know what we are doing and we haven't "cocked" anything up. Please can I ask before you slate our service you fully check everything with us as you've done this on more than one occasion intimating we are not delivering on the service promised / sold when we are. Other users such as @IrritableTech and @FN-GM can give you more impartial advice on how to help look into speed issues also. As per @FN-GM comment it's always worth while SNMP monitoring your switch uplink(s) so you can see what data you are trying to send to our router thus our stats should equal what yours show. I'm hoping the portal access will help put your minds at rest. This week we have seen about a 20% increase in traffic over normal levels on our network (+30% over our Google interconnect) with lots of schools hammering YouTube in particular. However we've still 10's of Gbits of spare capacity. FYI here's our nice AS Stats to Google today in case you don't believe us All comments welcome. Thanks Dave

Hi folks, I'm not in the office today (my birthday so trying not to work!) I've not been informed of any major issues but will speak with our techs tomorrow and have emailed then ref the above. As per my tweets to @Fazza we have no known speed issues. All leased lines are 1:1 contention ratio and you should get those speeds paid for all the time. Suggest you all also get your portal access setup at portal.talk-straight.com which shows you your bandwidth usage. I'll report back tomorrow when I'm in the office. Thanks Dave

http://beta.speedtest.net/result/4903452425.png Happy with that on a sync profile of 13.5Mbit. That's my home connection btw, no FTTC available

Hi @Edu-IT as per our advisories we send out, we recommend you block bing until bing for schools is released. Thanks Dave

er no school only please

via PM please Adam Thanks Dave

hi @fiza + @featured_spectre home or school whichever you like Thanks Dave

Hi folks, that's right get your stockings at the ready the free DrayTek 2830 router offer is back yet again for Xmas The DrayTek 2830 is an excellent DSL and Ethernet router / firewall with lots of functionality including VPN Bandwidth control / QOS Firewalling content filtering See Vigor 2830 Series for full product specs These are refurb routers we have replaced onsite as we've moved customers from onsite devices to cloud filtering and security To get one of these lovely routers all you have to do is send me the following info please Your name : Your email address : Your phone number : School name and address : Speed of current broadband : Annual cost of broadband : Supplier of current broadband : Type of content filtering : Annual cost of content filtering (if not included in broadband) : Supplier of current filtering : Contract expiration of the above : Thanks and merry Xmas! Dave

Sophos, Fortinet settle patent lawsuit, allegations of staff poaching • The Register an interesting read for you firewall folks

@timbo343 We've a lot of stock of spare handsets at the moment. I can guarantee to reduce your ongoing costs. System is mitel based. Send me a pm if interested? Thinking about it are you a customer of ours already?! Dave

We do this on home broadband connections no problem with Lightspeed filtering. Pm me if interested. Thanks Dave

you'd be surprised how affordable 100Mbit is now

that depends what speed you want I'll send you a PM Thanks Dave

Just because you give them notice prior to the expiry of the term shouldn't mean penalising you for doing so as you say you want to cancel your service at the end of the current contract period and not before hand. if they penalise you for doing so then you effectively have to have a long contract than 36 months if you have to give 6 months notice but get penalised if you put in notice before the end of the term then this is effectively a 42 month contract. Dave

Hi @denzal2k4, you could use a BT EAD circuit or you could use a Virgin Media Ethernet Extension or an Ethernet Extension+ circuit. The Ethernet Extension circuit is Virgins equivalent to a BT EAD. Ethernet Extension+ works slightly differently by allow multiple circuits to terminate at one site via VLAN on a 1Gbit or 10Gbit bearer rather than have lots of bits of separate physical fibre. I'll send you a PM as I can give you a price for both within about half an hour Thanks Dave