SchoolsBroadband

and a follow up about it School broadband - rich pickings? - BBC News

Safeguarding is an extremely important part of any educational ISP's connectivity piece and we take this very seriously. We work proactively with the police and other crime organisations which from time to time I have been personally involved in. I obviously can't comment on any specific cases but I can say we are active at looking for suspicious activity on our network from any individual. We can also pro-actively allow web browsing reports to be sent to schools e-safety officers. This is thanks to Lightspeeds brilliant web content filtering and suspicious search query functionality. On top of that we also arrange regular seminars for our existing customers and new ones. We are doing a number of these around Oxfordshire at the moment highlighting in particular the new Prevent Duty. If you'd like to come along for free then let me know and I will pass on the details. We've also recently attended a new national Internet Safety Roadshow calleed "Barney and Echo" which is part of the Police Clubs of Great Britain. See Barney and Echo Internet Safety Roadshows - Schools Broadband Schools Broadband Ultimately the school governors are liable as to who they decide to choose for their Internet safety and connectivity provider which is why companies like mine exist. I personally regularly attend events and speak to David Brown (HMI, Ofsted's national lead for ICT) who drives policy on e-safety for schools to ensure we as a responsible education focused ISP are doing everything we can to help protect children and are in line with government policy which I believe we are. I also recently was invited to speak at Fortinets EMEA conference in France in front of over 200 telecom companies as we are a global case study for Fortinet on how we protect schools networks. You may wish to take a look at Newsletters - Schools Broadband Schools Broadband which shows we're a lot more than just selling connectivity and a bit of filtering. Comments of course welcomed but again you may wish to speak with our clients here on what they think about us. David

completely agree. Even if we do offer them the same high capacity lines we are on average 30% cheaper than LGFL and we can actually do SSL filtering and a whole host of other things too....

and just to throw further petrol onto the fire Budget broadband deal emails hidden from London schools - BBC News Naughty LGFL and well done @exa_mark for standing up for schools and competition! Dave

wires only £5k, 60 month term. If you wanted a 36 month term we could do this but there would be an install fee.

beware of and Fortinet using a C, B or A series chip set. To allow the use of IPv6 all processing of packets is done in software and on the normal chipsets (not ASIC drive). This will affect the performance of UTM functionality in particular. D series Fortigate firewalls are ok as IPv6 acceleration is supported in the latest ASIC chipset. Thanks Dave

Hi @robjduk, @synaesthesia is correct. We offer speeds of up to 10Gbit. The 80Mbit product you are referring to is FTTC or EoFTTC which currently has a technical top limit of circa 80Mbit. We do not do bonding or balancing of FTTC or EoFTTC lines as we find the outcome of doing so is pretty poor. We don't actually offer a leased line of 150Mbit so to achieve this we'd install 200Mbit bandwidth on a 1Gbit bearer. This will give you guaranteed 1:1 contention ratio of 200Mbit upload and download. We're finding this is more and more commonplace for secondary schools now in particular. I'll send you a PM but feel free to ask anymore questions. Thanks Dave

we do cloud based Lightspeed which for primary schools is brilliant. It offers full HTTPS support as well from day one so no need for any onsite kit. Full integration with active directory and full per user reporting. See Web Filter for Schools - Lightspeed Systems Dave

I suspect the middle of the welsh mountains won't be too good for 3G or 4G You could by a satellite connection to do the job of Internet then using opendns.com to do filtering foc if you needed something cheap and cheerful? If you wanted a full solution we could use an EoIP tunnel back to our core network and you could have our Lightspeed filtering but it'd cost a bit more than the free opendns.com Thanks Dave

Hello everyone, I've a target to hit with one of my carriers so for the first lucky 10 customers that get in touch with me via Edugeek can have 100Mbit Leased line 1:1 contention ratio Lightspeed Filtering Lightspeed Mobile Device Management Licences Fortigate Security Free install Also comes with everything else in out standard platinum package. (see Internet Connectivity for Primary Schools Schools Broadband ) The above is for primary schools only and per annum. Order must be signed by 1st November Install fee subject to site survey Grad yourself a bargain and an extremely fast Internet connection to boot!!!!!! PM me if interested. Above is available to 90% of the country. Dave

@round2it we do a lot of VoIP phone systems as we're owned by our parent company Talk Straight that is a telecoms company. We're also based in Ilkey too so just down the road from you. Will send you a PM Dave

That's brought a smile to my face being a Yorkshire man and selling broadband for a living

Hi @northeast_technician we do all of that and look after a few hundred schools in the north east already. I'm sure a few of our customers on Edugeek here will say a few positive things about us Personally I'd recommend staying clear of normal broadband suppliers that don't specialise in the Education market as they will just sell you a line and don't understand the duty of care and services a school needs to give to its staff and pupils, particularly when it comes to filtering, working with the police, anti extremist act etc etc I'm sure prices will change from now until August 2017 but if you wanted an indicative quote do send me a PM. Thanks Dave

here here. Latest example. Letter sent out a couple of weeks from a GFL to all schools in a Borough. You have until 23rd October to either cancel your contract or it auto renews for another 12 months after 31st March 2016 or sign here now for a new 5 year contract. 2 weeks notice?!?!!?!?! Choice?!?!?! competition?!?!!? It's impossible to do a proper procurement exercise in that time. That's it no more from me otherwise I will get angry

Yes, I'd been contemplating opening a new POP / data centre in West London so am going to be doing so which enables us to use a different product from Virgin Media wholesale which thus brings down our buy prices so we can pass them onto our prospective customers hence the change in price. It's quite exciting for us as this will be our 5th POP / data centre in the UK and enables us to cover much more of London at a much better price, particularly with anything over 100Mbit. The POP will be connected by dark fibre allowing the use of multiple wavelengths connecting back to our national network. Demand drives innovation and that is what we've just done so London customers get access to very big bandwidths at very good prices. Thanks Dave

@Phoenix_IT, I'm not attacking LGFL just pointing things out for people so they can make their own informed decision. If you'd seen some of the letters sent to schools in Hillingdon from LGFL about one of our / their competitors it'd make you bawk :-/ We've enough people on Edugeek to know what we're about and I do believe our product sells itself hence why we're being successful at the moment. Just ask all of our many clients on here! Dave

@Zoom7000 I'm not forgetting that at all. We and our friends at Exa offer the same or similar via Microsoft or Google which is FOC. Also we do all the VoIP, secure file transfer etc as standard too. Just take a look at our website and what's in the standard product. In my opinion (and the opinion of many schools from not just LGFL but other GFL's) the content side of things doesn't overly matter as the biggest resource in the world is the Internet with most of what schools need on there. £7kpa for teaching and learning content??!?!?! Lightspeed offer's its Teacher Dashboard which incorporates a lot of learning material. You are most likely correct that Atomwide have not claimed to be a not for profit organisation but I have seen LGFL present at how they are 100% not for profit and all profits are ploughed back into the network and the solution. In my opinion this is not transparency at all. When using Virgin Media any provider has to use them as they have the fibre in the ground to allow the connection. Every provider does not have to use Atomwide's services so I don't think you are comparing apples with apples there. We offer the Forticlient end point security which links into our hosted Fortigate UTM product seamlessly and Office 365 as email as standard. That's all I'm going to say on the matter as I do not wish to be drawn into any kind of flame war argument. The facts are there for all to see and people are clever enough to make their own judgement call on it. I will not respond to any further points raised Dave

I completely agree with @exa_mark here in the comms industry prices go one way and that's down. Sure you can get better prices today for a long 5 year contract but the industry and technology changes. I gave a presentation after LGFL to a lot of schools the other day and was very concerned that he and I'm thus presuming most of LGFL as a whole didn't even know what G.fast was. This will completely change everything again and give much faster speeds for a fraction of the cost of leased lines today. I'd also debate that LGFL are a not for profit organisation. Certainly the Atomwide directors took dividends of £900k last year which I'm presuming came mostly from doing business with LGFL so someone is certainly making a rather healthy profit from LGFL........ https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02142875/filing-history and click on accounts from 29 Dec 2014

Hi @minimoo, we need to change that as leased lines actually start at a lot less than that. For a primary school in London we can do 200Mbit leased lines for around the £6k mark, secondary schools a bit more but not much if you don't take our filtering and security packages. Most schools do though as you get Lightspeed content filtering and your own virtual Fortigate firewall on our high availability cloud based clusters. We guarantee to beat LGFL's pricing. Your're correct ref MITM attacks. It really surprises me that LGFL being an RBC they can't support SSL based filtering as this leaves all the pupils at risk. if you'd like a quote let me know and Ill get one sent over. Thanks Dave

Can LGFL not do SSL filtering at the moment and sort out the recent issue with google by doing a man in the middle attack? Thanks Dave

you can do this as standard with our hosted Lightspeed offering on any remote device and have the same filtering and reporting as if you were in school. PM me if you have any questions. Thanks David

I wonder who that could be!?

you have to look at the tech specs very carefully and ideally test the boxes with the same amount of traffic with different UTM functionality turned on. My view is the specs are about as useful as the results from emissions test on cars! Test, test and test again. Anyone saying you can do proper full inspection of traffic doing inline anti-virus scanning at full gig wirespeed on x86 boxes are either a) lying or b) not doing proper in-line anti-virus / UTM which in my opinion all schools and businesses should be using. Then try turn on layer 7 app control and other functionality too. As per @localzuk devices using ASIC processors have an advantage to x86 boxes as they offload specific functions to chipsets which are specifically designed to do them so you can get more throughput. This also leads to great scalability. What are all those customers going to do with their firewalls which are on the end of an 80Mbit FTTC connection when g.fast comes along initially starting at 300Mbit? For the vast majority of firewall vendors if you want to do full UTM then they'll have to go in the bin and you'll have to buy new firewalls. It's one of the reasons why we use carrier class virtual firewalls in the cloud as they can do gigs and gigs of traffic with full UTM turned on so you won't need to buy new firewalls in the future. Make sense? Thanks Dave

hi @fiza, see Free AntiVirus & Anti-Rootkit & Anti-Malware | Free Web Filtering | Free VPN | Free IPSec | Free FortiClient Please note we do not install the free version, we install the enterprise version which ties into the Fortigate UI. Thanks Dave

Hi @kearton, i do remember coming to see you but couldn't convince you to use us at the time Fortinet filtering is very good, but its not user friendly for a primary school in particular. Lightspeed is better at allowing none technical people to use it to block and allow sites or categories of sites for specific lessons etc which is why we offer Lightspeed for everyone. I'd say Lightspeed is generally better than fortigate too but that's not saying that Fortigate isn't good enough for a school environment by any means. If you want a quote for a 100D or 200D then by all means do let me know as we can provide you with the box and UTM renewal. We can even set it up for you if you'd like Thanks Dave