SchoolsBroadband

I really don't understand how any company doesn't offer AD integration it's a piece of cake to do

Middle of August mate. BT should have their work done 1st week so watch this space! You sound excited

We've just got some awesome pricing for wholesale costs from Virgin. Unfortunately too late to help schools in Northmptonshire as there is no way they'll get the line in before 31st October. Once in Virgin is really good. Unfortunately getting it in can be a nightmare. Where Virgin fibre hasn't already been installed our last few wholesale orders we placed with them have taken 9 months ( yes NINE months!) to get in

We've just done our first secondary school within embc on a full 100mbit. The school has peaked at around 70mbit this week with average speeds of about 45mbit for the majority of the day. I have no evidence to back it up but Ive Been told RM use Talk Talk which is why their prices are so cheap. We generally use BT wholesale which I believe is a superior service as it doesn't use the same bandwidth as their desk customers unlike Talk Talk which Ive been told does. Talk Talk use a BT Local Access Ethernet Direct fibre service from the school to he exchange then their own Talk Talk network around the country. So even though the school just sees BT lines and equipment in their comma cabinet, there's much more going on in the background and it's not 100% BT. Although Talk Talk can be cost effective we've seen quite a few problems using their service with regards to speed and we rarely use them anymore, never for schools. A prime example is our new office. We used a Talk Talk service to connect back to our nearest pop. Big mistake, after 4 months our 100mbit service never gets above 70mbit download and 40mbit upload. We've had multiple engineers to site from BT and Talk Talk and we are still not working. The latest is that BT are rebuilding the local EAD fibre circuit but I doubt that this is where the problem lies. I'll let you know how we get on. THe moral of the story is though that you get what you pay for!

aww shucks you'll make me blush @synaesthesia Thanks for the kind words

Well we are here @ SchoolsBroadband Not sure what Glenda is on about ref Fortinet. They are brilliant firewalls. We've been using them for years.

Im presuming your router allows inter VLAN routing / being able to assign different policies between VLAN networks? if so allow port 80 remotely and forward it to the IP camera (or put it on a weird port which is also a good idea). Then only allow one way traffic from your normal computer VLAN (i.e. nat on this interface). You should be able to also specify only certain computers on your network having access to the LAN IP of the camera. Alternatively put the IP Camera in a proper DMZ. I don't know the netgear router / firewall you're refering to specifically but I know you can do this on the Fortigate firewalls we provide to schools Good luck Dave

We're all fans of the HTC Range. The Wildfire S is about £140 + VAT I think

Hello everyone, to start off with mods, I have this is ok posting here. Please do let me know if not and move to any relevant forum but it is Internet related. I'm interested in getting IT managers feedback on a potential leased line product we are considering selling via an LLU provider. I have my reservations but would love to get some honest opinions from you. Currently for leased lines we sell guaranteed 1:1 contention ratio, same speed upload / download, speed fixed 24x7x365 at fixed speeds. Normally for secondary schools this is either a 50Mbit or 100Mbit. Leased lines are not cheap, but you get what you pay for and we almost always recommend them for secondary schools. I have been approached by an LLU provider to offer the education market a new product. This will be £1,000 to £1,500pa cheaper than our normal product as above. As an example lets talk about a 100Mbit line From 08:00 - 17:00 you'd get the full 100Mbit with 1:1 contention ratio as per the normal product. Outside of these hours we then give 100Mbit of bandwidth to 10 schools, effectively giving a 10:1 contention ratio. The thing is though if you look at all the network stats, schools hardly ever use bandwidth outside of these hours. Sure there is the odd bit of offsite backup but not much. it's highly likely that schools will get nearer to the 100Mbit outside of the hours anyway due to low usage by other schools. I really do want to put it on the record though that we are only THINKING about providing this. We do NOT currently provide this and haven't to any schools using our service or currently signed up to do so in the near future. If we do go with the product we will also offer both different options and be completely up front about the differences in the product. Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated. Thanks guys!

£9k is a good price for a 100Mbit leased line although it does depend where you are exactly. Also do you get the fast speeds all of the time? Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think the CLEO pricing is a set amount for bandwidth then so many pounds per student per year? If so as you're quite a small secondary school then that's probably why your price is low. Leased line pricing depends on many factors normally which are the following Distance from BT local node Distance from other fibre provider local fibre e.g. Virgin Speed Contention ratio (BT for example offer a 5:1 wholeasle fibre option) Is there another LLU provider in the exchange? e.g. If we want to we could use a BT Ethernet Access Direct Local Access circuit back to the telephone exchange and then use an LLU carrier such as O2 or Talk Talk to use backhaul from their network back to the Internet. Just so you know we've sold 100Mbit leased lines from as little as £7.5kpa all the way to £18kpa. They really can change dramatically dependent on the above criteria.

EMPSN overly complicated? Surely not

For primary schools KCOM often do something called LLU (Local Loop Unbundling). KCOM often refer to this as MPF. This is where they put their own equipment in the telephone exchange, put a network connection to it to another POP / node elsewhere for upstream capacity and then use a standard BT copper pair (or multiple ones) to deliver 2Mbit to 4Mbit of speed. When a school decides not to use KCOM at an exchange where they are doing LLU then KCOM loses revenue so it pushes the price up for them to deliver the circuits to the other schools on the same exchange. They can of course subsidise this by where they make considerably more elsewhere should they wish / be able to. When they had the contract for all schools within EMBC it wasn't an issue for them as they were guaranteed. Now other service providers such as ourselves, our friends above at M247 and others can use BT's 21CN platform which allows a near flat playing field for all providers. Some have the advantage of LLU'ing an exchange already as they have other businesses / customers using their services at the same exchange so can be more cost effective. Unless a council forces all schools (which they shouldn't do but often do!) to continue to use the current supplier (as we've seen in many different areas over the country) then it's difficult for the RBC model to work. I must take my hat off particularly to Northamptonshire who I think have been brilliant for schools. They've not put up barriers for other providers to come into the market and therefore companies have been able to innovate, use the latest technology and give better services to schools which have directly benefited them both financially and technologically. Schools will also be able to benefit from the new technologies BT are releasing such as full FTTP which will deliver speeds of up to 330Mbit download 30Mbit upload. Great stuff compared to the old 2Mbit circuits they once had......

What size school are you @mgothorp and what speeds did you used to get? I'm guessing you're a secondary school and have a 40Mbit Fibre connection?

agreed google or open dns are great

In my opinion it's not just about the raw speed you get from a line. It's also the service level and the people behind the service. Yes I'm aware that cable modem home connections for example can be unbelievably fast but what happens when there is a problem? I know of a few occasions where whole towns have been knocked offline for more than 24 hours or slow speeds have occured for similar times. For a service from a specialist educational ISP or the LA depending on the technology used you should get guaranteed speeds, immediate support and a guaranteed service level. Could you imagine having a fault and having to go to a virtual call centre in another country? Not good. On another note specialist education ISP's should give help on other areas inc filtering, general security etc. I'm not trying to sterotype but many schools and technicians don't have the skills to do this properly (even though some say they do!). It's important to be accredited so the engineers / technicians at the ISP know exactly what they are doing and have gone through rigourous training to do so. It's not hard to set a firewall / fitlering up basically. But in my opinion really knowing exactly what you are doing is a massive value add and should not be under estimated. It's also well worth pointing out that contention ratio's on BT's wholesale 21CN network for DSL and FTTC services don't really exist as a 20:1 or 50:1 anymore. I was never convinced those contention ratios did actually exist int he first place. Broadband over BT's 21CN network for DSL and FTTC works generally one of two ways. Either Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) or Wholesale Broadband Managed Connect (WMBC). WMBC gives an ISP a connection into BT's network (normally bought as a 10GIG interconnect). BT then give you a guaranteed rate which I believe is 2Mbit download on ADSL and 12Mbit download on FTTC back to the ISP's 10GIG interconnect. You can pay additionally for BT's Elevated Best Efforts (EBE) which we do on all circuits as standard. This then guarantees 3Mbit download on ADSL and 16Mbit on FTTC. Contention as such can happen in two places. Firstly at the BT exchange. e.g. you have a 37Mbit BRAS (A BRAS profile is the definite speed you will get and is lower than the actual sync speed normally by 3 to 4%). The second place is at the ISP's interconnect into BT. The below example is for WMBC. e.g you have a 30Mbit BRAS profile, the ISP has gigs of spare capacity on its interconnect into BT. Yet the end user only downloads at 20Mbit. Here there will be contention / issues between BT's network and delivering it to the ISP. e.g. 2 you have 30Mbit BRAS profile, the ISP is running at 100% capacity but BT's network is not. The custer then wouldn't get his full 30Mbit. Specialist ISP's should never hit capacity and should manage this. You'll find the cheaper ones over subscribe their interconnects into BT. There is the WBC. This is only done by a very small handful of ISP's who actually have their own network around the UK. This option is much more flexible than WMBC but you need lots of users to make it worth while in specific locations. BT has a number of nodes on their 21CN network around the country (18 I think). An ISP can take an Interconnect into any or all of these nodes. The ISP then buys a different amount of bandwidth into each node. This allows the ISP to have the correct amount of capacity at each node rather than a 10GIG single interconnect into BT. BT then hands off bandwidth at each node / interconnect and passes it onto the ISP's network. This is generally how we provide our DSL and FTTC services. e.g. we are doing a lot of business in Northampton at the moment which goes on BT's Peterborough node so this is where additional bandwidth is purchased. Leased line circuits on BT's 21CN network cast iron guarantee bandwidth all the way from the customers site through the exchange and to the node / interconnect. Here endeth the lesson! I hope you found it useful!

If possible go FTTC. This is far more cost effective and generally gives a faster services than the leased line I'm sure you'll have been specified. If you like PM me and I'll let you know what speeds and services are available at your location.

Most firewalls should be able to do much of this as standard. You might want to take a look at one that also does SSL VPN as standard and integration into Windows Active Directory so you can see on a per user basis who has been looking at what and then report on it.

Just to let you know the domain names belong to the school. Nominet do not charge any company anything to host the domains. The costs you may incur by moving from the LA are for the MX hosting / email scanning and access to their control panel to access it. Dave

What size subnet have you been given from your broadband provider?

It's quite interesting to read what you all use. We find the following is normal for all of the schools using our services. Primary Schools - 65GIG per month Secondary Schools - 700GIG per month This is going up month on month though as more lessons are using the Internet to deliver content and research materials. To reduce bandwidth have you considered using a proxy / trans proxy on site? Primary schools in particular often use the same websites over and over again so having a local copy can speed up browsing and also reduce your over all bandwidth consumption. Dave

We've been "doing" bonding for some time. It's important to understand the difference between bonding and balancing, Balances sends packets / data down each different link giving you a different real world IP address each time you go out. So unless you use an application such as torrenting which makes thousands of separate connections to different IP endpoints then you'll never get the full bandwidth on a single download. e.g. you balance 2 x ADSL connections which both get a maximum of say 8Mbit then you won't get a throughput on single download of 16Mbit. You'll just get 8Mbit. If someone on a PC next to you then trys to download a file that is balanced onto the second link then they two should get 8Mbit. Add both together then it's 16Mbit but only on separate connections. Balancing is ok, has the above issue and also others. They are the fact that the upload will also never be double the speed for the reason as above with the download. Also if you host anything on site or use a VPN then a remote user will never be able to get full use of the bandwidth on both lines. It'll only get the maximum speed from 1 line. Some websites / hosted applications also don't like balancing the connection as the real world IP address of your Internet connection keeps on changing. To get these sites to work you have to program your balancing device to permanently send all packets / data down the same link to either IP end point of via protocol used. e.g https sites can be broken by balancing sometimes. Bonding is superior to balancing in every way. The speeds is truely bonding together. i.e you have 2 x 8mbit download lines then you will get 16Mbit download from 1 download stream. Your real world IP addresses are always the same so VPN'ing in and hosting web servers on site make use of the increased upload bandwidth. There are a couple of ways to do bonding. MLPPP - This is done by having a device on site such as a Cisco and they create PPP links back to the ISP's LNS (this terminates the L2TP tunnels over BT's network). Packets are spread over each link and re-assembled on the LNS to give one throughput. The downside we've seen of MLPPP is that if you have for example 2 x ADSL lines, one syncs at 7Mbit and the other at 8Mbit then the max you'll get is 7Mbit out of each line. I'm not 100% sure on the technicalities as to why (perhaps one of my engineers would like to add to this thread, Luke?!!) but this is what we've seen in practise. It also means that if your ISP has an issue then the amount of resilience you have is lessened as if their core network has an issue then you can kiss your connection goodbye. Also ADSL lines can go up and down in speed which can also have quite a dramatic effect on performance. Some ISP's say you must only use MLPPP with fixed rate DSL. i.e. the now very old 512k, 1Mbit and 2Mbit options. This is generally a cheaper way than the next way to bond. Xrio UBM - We actively sell this product and have our own Xrio UBM infrastructure. You must have a UBM bonding device on site and one "in the cloud". GRE tunnels are made from the extneral interface of all WAN connections on the onsite UBM back to a single WAN connection on the hosted UBM. Packets are distributed over all GRE links by use of Xrio's own algorithm. Using UBM's has the following advantages 1) The WAN links don't have to be the same speed. One could run at 5Mbit, the other at 7Mbit and you'd get 12Mbit of download, unlike with the previously mentioned MLPPP offering. 2) You can bond connections from multiple ISP's. This gives greater resilience. We for example sometimes offer 2 x BT wholesale based ADSL's and 2 x O2 / Be Wholesale ADSL's. If the BT ADSL's fail then the GRE links go down between both UBM devices. Therefore the O2 DSL's simply continue to function and the speed is reduced. As soon as the BT ADSL's come back on line the you are back to full speed. There is some "bonding overhead" and we normally say about 10% of overall download bandwidth. We've actually bonded 4 x FTTC 40Mbit services for a large school in Cheshire. The throughput they often get is about 105Mbit download and 32Mbit upload where the BRAS profiles are 38Mbit download and 10Mbit upload on all connections. This proved far more cost effective than the equivalent leased line. We also often bond dual ADSL's for primary schools when they are a long way from the telephone exchange. Happy to discuss the merits or any more technicalities. I hope the above makes sense! Thanks Dave Tindall

may I ask out of interest how long everyone has contracted with LGFL 2.0 for? We've a few schools using our services in London as an alternative to LGFL

may I ask out of interest how long everyone has contracted with LGFL 2.0 for? We've a few schools using our services in London as an alternative to LGFL

FTTC is great. We were testing the 80Mbit service back in December in conjunction with BT and got 76Mbit download and 18Mbit upload out of it. Now that's fast!!!!

you could try using Forticlient Lite. This comes with free content filtering with anti virus. If can also be password protected so your children can't just turn it off. Just google "forticlient lite"