EXA_Mark

Maybe VERY soon. If you want to PM me your school post code, I'll let you know more.

I am sure some of you are already aware of our DarkLight service, and also what we are now doing in West Sussex. So I thought I would tell you about our launch event for West Sussex based schools, next Tuesday 9th October between 10 am and 12. The event will let you hear from ourselves, our partner, JSPC and CityFibre who are laying the fibre for us. I would strongly recommend schools to attend the event, even if you are in contract now with someone else, as we can build to the school for when you current contract expires, without upfront costs, as it makes sense for us to do this during the whole construction stage, rather than going back to it later. If you want to check whether your school would be able to get DarkLight in West Sussex (or other areas for that matter), you are welcome to PM me before register The bit below is from the registration page Mark The world’s fastest internet technology is coming to schools throughout West Sussex… We are delighted to inform you that Exa Education and JSPC Computer Services Ltd are working together to bring DarkLight - the revolutionary dark fibre internet connection - to West Sussex. To celebrate the upcoming launch of this service, and to explain the incredible benefits it will bring, we’re hosting a breakfast event at The Charmandean Centre between 10:00 and 12:00 on Tuesday 9th October - and we’d love you to join us! Why should you attend? The dark fibre network infrastructure is currently being laid by our partners, CityFibre (you can read more on this at: https://bit.ly/2zCGXos). During this build time, it is imperative that we have an understanding of which schools will require a world-class DarkLight connection in the future. In knowing this, we can ensure that a connection is laid direct to your school’s door - so as soon as the network is live, you will be able to take advantage of the world’s fastest internet technology (although you can always wait until a time that is convenient for you). Not only will this ensure that you are one of the first schools in the county to receive this Next Generation Technology, it will also minimise the installation cost! Find out everything you need to know at our 'West Sussex - UK'S First Gigabit County' event on Tuesday 9th October, book your free ticket here: http://www.exa.is/tickets

Yes it is, very actively.

A very fair point, no sales pitch! We've been working directly with DCMS specifically on this, and I was in a meeting personally with them less than a week ago. It's estimated there could be around 1500-2000 schools altogether that are in this situation of not being able to get more than 20Mbps, but the reality is, most of them cannot get a fraction of that speed, and you are right, a huge percentage of them are in rural areas. So your view is pretty accurate. DCMS is working with the DfE to see what can be done, in connection with the LFFN (Local Full Fibre Network programme) whose main aim is to get Gigabit (plus) capable connectivity to as many businesses, schools and homes as possible, but ultimately is still a finite pot of money. Some of the solutions are working with local authorities to expand their network, and then national services providers such as Exa & City Fibre, in the West Sussex example https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/isp-exa-networks-to-supply-west-sussexs-gigabit-fttp-network.html to expand that network out even further, whilst a large part of this is still urban and semi-urban, there are rural areas within this example where we are looking to expand our network into too. In an ideal world, there would be enough money to put in an relatively low cost open infrastructure that all service providers could use to pull their fibre through (I am aware of Openreaches PIA options) that reached every location in the UK, but we are decades away from that, even with investment. So we have to do our bit, slowly but surely, as will other providers like Hyperoptic, Gigaclear, ITS, Virgin and Openreach, but the economics of deploying fibre without subsidy or grants to very rural locations who do not have enough premises to offer a return on that investment means areas will miss out in the short and medium term. However, after now saying that, the DCMS side of things is to help us, and other providers get out further and further from the core network infrastructure. The school's side, as you noted, is a pilot, but pilots often go beyond the pilot scope, and hopefully, this one will too. I know the initial 100 targets, is just that, an INITIAL target. If you couple this pilot, with the DCMS Gigabit Voucher scheme (Up to £3,000 for business to get gigabit capable fibre installed) then all of a sudden there is a bit more money to help with extended digs and getting fibre further out into the rural community. On the pilot scheme we are already looking at more than 50 schools for consideration on this. It will require more than this though; it requires joined-up working and thinking, from ISPs, Central & Local Government & Communities to get this moving quicker. If you look at it from our example, NOT A SALES PITCH, Exa only offers services to Education and Businesses, we do not provide services to residential. So if we are looking to go to an area where there are only a handful of connections for us from the business and education side, then we have to look to who else we can work with who would be interested in sharing the construction costs to provide to the residential community. Partnerships we have such as CityFibre and Vodafone work perfectly in that example. Things are moving forward on this, much more so than at any point up to now, but it will take time. As someone who lives in a rural area without any FTTP type services, I cannot say I feel it is rural discrimination, just a case of economics. I obviously say this with more insider knowledge than a lot of people, and yes it is frustrating sometimes. It is important that (in this example) schools speak to their ISPs and see what they can do to help, or speak to specialist in this field, like Exa. Okay one sales pitch, but I wrote a lot first! Seriously though if anyone wants more information on the DCMS side, fibre expansions or anything really on this type of topic, feel free to speak to me via the forum, PM or ring me on 0345 1451234, and there will be no sales pitch whichever way you contact me, just happy to share the knowledge we have.

You could also PM me for a quote too Exa's DarkLight service offers 1Gbps on a 10Gbps bearer for less than £6K a year, and our average 1Gbps on 1Gbps (where DarkLight isn't available is less than £8.5K a year), inlcludes support, and SurfProtect Quantum Filtering (if required)

Just letting you all know about our ExaBytes18 conference, which will be taking place on the 29th June 2018 in West Yorkshire. This event is run by our "not for profit" Exa Foundation. I want to make it clear, this is not an Exa Networks or Exa Education event, there is no Exa Networks/Education sales pitches, literature or anything else. In fact, there are no sales or veiled sales related pitches at all during the day. It is more than 25 individual sessions covering everything around computer curriculum and programming, to safeguarding and STEM-related work for students after they leave school/FE/HE. There are some amazing presenters, and keynotes, including Miles Berry and Phil Bagge, and it is a genuine learning conference. This is not the type of conference you sit there watching others on powerpoint all day, it is a hands-on, learning and doing conference, with a couple of presentations for industry and education leaders. The event is open to all schools throughout the UK, and overseas, and the cost for the day is £58.80, this includes being fed multiple times too I know most people on these forums won't be the ones attending, but please pass this link onto the people in your school who you think should know about these sort of events. Full details of all the speakers and sessions can be found below. More details on conference HERE Any questions about the event feel free to PM me.

@JiscLuke, That's not exactly an accurate statement. Our service, DarkLight on a point to point, or point to multi-point, does just that, starting at 10Gbps up to 100Gbps uncontended. It is Dark Fibre (lit by us) between each point, not touching any third party network or sharing bandwidth. I could point you to multiple Colleges and Universities that already have it in.

Hi @Fazza Sorry for the delay in replying, I've just got back from a meeting, and have been out of the office all day. I think there may have been a bit of confusion in house on this, or at least a misunderstanding on what you wanted to do. I shall take this up with the Support Manager in the morning to make sure all of the team are aware that you can simply get the SurfProtect certificate by going to the webpage which is hosted at exa.is/certificate so if you send that link to users they’ll be able to download it directly from there, rather than emailing or copying it over. Unfortunately, enacting SSL filtering means that the certificate does need to be installed onto each user’s device if they would like to decrypt all sites rather than just HTTP domains, which is something I would strongly recommend, whilst you could avoid HTTPS filtering (as a few others have mentioned), this is not in line with DfE guidelines. We are always looking for less invasive ways of doing the decryption, but for now, you do have to install them, which I know can be time consuming, but hopefully sending people to the link, will hopefully speed things up a bit. Hope this helps but if you need anything else just let me know.

Hi @Fazza Have you managed to sort whatever you were trying to do? If not let me know and I'll get on our our team to give you a shout. We are a linux development house, as well as an ISP, so I am sure we can help.

Morning @Dom_ I was away from the office yesterday afternoon in meetings, so not quite as quick as normal to respond, but I understand the team have been in touch with you already before I saw this post. Is everything okay now? If you need anything else you are welcome to ring me directly on 0345 1451234 or PM me. Thank you @DJ-1701 for point @Dom_ in my direction

Hi Newpersn, I'd missed this, has this been sorted? Was it anything our side? PM me if you need anything.

Hi Epoch_roots Not quite sure what has happened here, but I'd like to sort it out for you. Things such as installation documents, guides and such are part of the standard handover documents, and with the introduction of our Customer Relationship Team (CRT) are talked through with every customer for connectivity or filtering at "go live". We pride ourselves on our customer service and if we do try and reach out, it is because we want to help you. We are human, and that means even our best account managers, or support staff, or yes, even me, might miss an email or not get back to someone as quick as we should, but if we know about it we will always do something about it. Please drop me a PM and if the issue is still outstanding I will ensure it is looked at. For the record, it was me that reached out to you before, but I cannot see any PM or email from you then.

Hi Thomass, If you need anything further from Exa, formal quote, schools to speak to, facts and figures about our network, capacity, uptime, anything really, just let me know.

Just to chip in a bit on this discussion. FTTPOD (at least in its current pushed out technology) is not a replacement technology for leased lines or services like our DarkLight, but a logical step for Openreach to move forward beyond FTTC. It's not a symmetrical service (as has been pointed out), it is not a service that is uncontended, and it will see network congestion, and you will see some BIG install charges. We just had a quote from Openreach last week (every FTTP OD is quoted like a leased line by Openreach, and this usually takes a few days for them to give ISPs an estimate) for one of our schools in a semi-rural part of Northampton, and the initial installation charge was in excess of £16,500. And that is the estimate, to get the firm figure you currently have to pay Openreach £250 + VAT for the survey. To be fair to Openreach, they subsidise (to a degree) all FTTP OD installs, as essentially you are helping pay for the expansion of their network, and the next organisation who wants it will be paying less, but it is still a very expensive option for a lot of people at present. As a comparison, in that same area a 1Gbps on 1Gbps uncontended leased line is a fraction of the installation cost, but more on an annual basis. However over a three year period, the guaranteed 1Gbps symmetrical leased line(in this instance) was cheaper overall. Ultimately these costs will vary massively for FTTP OD (if it's available) throughout the country, depending on your location, so don't think of this as a cheaper way of getting fibre installed. @Blue_Cookeh in your instance if BT wanted £70K a few years ago to install a leased line, you'll probably find it would be very similar as I am guessing from that quote either there was a huge amount of excess construction to get to the school, or you are a long way from BT's fibre nodes. If anyone is interested in FTTP OD (we do the standard FTTP too) then send me a PM and we will get you a quote, and a comparison of other technology costs.

Morning, The team are checking now. I think you spoke with Jack on Friday, who suggested that another customer had similar issues, this turned out to not be the case and was an internal issue for that other customer. As far as we can see there is no issue affecting a wider scale number of customers, hence why the team (support, and the Dev Ops teams) are checking into it, therefore, can I ask you to give them a call on 0345 1451234, and speak to Jack or Patrick, as this will help us narrow down why you are seeing this. Thanks

Yes, all fixed at this end, thanks to everyone on the thread for bringing this to the teams attention today. In reality, it was quite a complex issue, not just a regular DNS C name type thing, In part it was IPv6 related (Quantum routes IPv6 as preferred, if available), and that coupled with some weird DNS redirecting/writing because of that, caused the site to be re-routed for some customers to the http://www.exa.net.uk website instead. Once again, sorry, I hope this wasn't too much of an inconvenience for any of you, and again thanks for the heads up to start with. As an extra special thank you to all on this post, we have a really brilliant new customer support interface coming up in the next few months, replacing the current version of help.exa.net.uk and if any of you would like to get an advanced sneak peak next month pm me

Did you get this sorted? If not send me a PM and I'll get the support team to give you a call and walk you through it.

That should be no problem at all to set up, if you PM me your details I will get the support team to give you a call and talk you through it.

Hi Epoch_roots, Can you pm me with your details so I can get in touch as I would like to look into this for you. Exa's various connectivity options (DSL, FTTC, EoFTTC, Leased Lines or DarkLight) did not have any outages at a network level in the past two weeks at all. Our network is fully redundant across multiple datacentres, across diverse geographic areas of the UK. That is not to say your individual connection did not have an issue, hence my request for a PM. On the SurfProtect side, there were two outages (w/c 8th January), each one was approximately 15 minutes. This was whilst we were putting an update in place as part of SurfProtect continual development. Whilst we try to avoid any outages, sometimes things happen, and despite rigorous lab testing on all updates, sometimes things just work differently when you have a million plus concurrent connected users all doing very different things. We then had a freeze change during Bett week, as we know, that not only do we have staff out (although predominatly from the sales side), but our schools have key staff there too, which is why we do not do any optional updates or upgrades to our networks, servers or software (such as SurfProtect) during that time. The aforementioned SurfProtect update was then done in an evening maintenance window earlier this week without issue. On the status page, again without more details, I cannot comment specifically, but we do update these straight away as soon as an incident is known. You can find information at https://status.exa.net.uk/ where you can also subscribe for automatic updates, or connect to feeds such as RSS or Atom if you have not done already. On the phone that is weird. As in the first instance it rings our reception, then if they are busy and unable to answer within three rings, every phone in the office rings, which is why we have such quick answering time. That does not mean it is impossible that there wasn't an issue, but if it rang through at our end it would never ring for even 30 seconds without being answered by someone in our office. Back to the start though, please pm me with your details and let me look into it.

It really depends which infrastructure provider you or your ISP use (as a few others have said). For the vast majority of the UK, point to points are done over Openreach infrastructure as they have the largest install base, and even other providers such as VMB do you OR tails quite often. With that in mind, if you are getting a quote from a supplier (including Exa) then you shouldn't find that much difference on costs, as all providers who take tails from OR buy them at the same rate card. So there shouldn't be more than £500 between the cheapest quote and the most expensive (unless people are adding big margins on). Install should be around a couple of thousand (for OR) and anywhere from £3K upwards for the tail. Happy to give you a quote if you want, just PM me.

Just to throw our hat in the ring so to speak. You could go with an option that a lot of our schools go with, which is a mix of both hardware and software. For instance on an Exa connection, we provide our own filtering, SurfProtect, and if you take the Quantum option, this fully integrates to the AD to give per-user filtering and supports BYOD; along with a UTM, something like the Fortigate 60E or 100E, which again we can supply and manage, and this I suspect will work out several thousand of pounds cheaper than the other options? If you would like a quote to consider, just send me a PM and I'll get one of the team to put you together with some options, so at least you have everything on the table so to speak.

I so wish I could say what I want to but I cannot, not yet! The bit mentioned earlier about BT / Openreach was not what I was referring to though. That is the DFA (Dark Fibre Access), and the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled with BT (and others) who did not want to open this network up and appealed against the OFCOM decision to do so and won. This is now on indefinate hold. Do not expect this anytime soon. Of course Openreach could change their minds in the future, if they felt they were being left behind by not opening up.

There are things in the works now at that level that we are privy to, but cannot talk about yet, that will see it become available to many more schools than now but to be fair it will not be to every single school, but it will make it open to a lot more than it is now. And it could start much sooner than 18 months too!

Hi Tesla, There are huge chunks of E2BN market areas that are covered, so if you are on net (PM me the post code if you want me to check) they, or another provider, say Exa Education may well be able to connect you via the GPON variant

If any of you would like to know if you are on, or close to the network for DarkLight or the GPON service, just PM me your postcode and I can tell you straight away, because as a Dark Fibre provider we have access to the full network map around the UK, as well as knowledge of future builds. I promise you will get no follow on sales calls or information (unless you want them!)