Nildram bonded ADSL boosts bandwidth and cuts costs at Oakham School
Aim
When Oakham School, one of the East Midlands' leading independent educational organisations, realised that it had outgrown its 2Mbps leased line Internet connection, it chose to upgrade to a distinctive bonded broadband service from award-winning ISP, Nildram. This has enabled the school to increase its bandwidth dramatically by combining six standard 2Mbps broadband ADSL circuits to create a single connection, avoiding the major cost of installing new leased lines. As ADSL speeds increase, there is the potential for the system to offer an Internet connection running at 144Mbps through six bonded 24Mbps circuits.
Background info:
The 400 year old co-educational school caters for day pupils and boarders aged from ten to eighteen and is located in Rutland, a green belt area with limited access to high speed data connections. "If we were based in London or Manchester, it would typically cost around £1,200 to add additional capacity," explains Jeremy Pole, Senior Network Manager at Oakham School. "We researched the option of installing a second leased line, but our rural location makes this far too expensive, requiring an additional £18,000 of investment."
In line with the growth of Information Technology (IT), the school now has twice the number of computers on site than it did four years ago. In addition, the dormitories now all have network connection points, which means that potentially there could be more than 1,000 personal computers using the Internet at any one time.
As well as recreational Internet surfing, instant messaging and e-mail, it has now become common practice for students to use the Internet as part of the curriculum during lessons. It is not unusual for several classes at Oakham School to be online simultaneously. The previous Internet connection was unable to cope with such demand and had become increasingly slow, reaching the point where it was simply impractical for teaching.
Bonded Broadband:
Bonded broadband is a relatively new concept in Internet provision, with Nildram being one of only a few companies providing the service. The set-up at Oakham School was designed specifically to meet the needs of the organisation and consists of six separate 2Mbps broadband ADSL lines. These are bonded together as one line entering a Linux router using server-class PCI ADSL hardware, rather than the Cisco router that is limited to four lines.
The Linux bonded broadband ADSL service operates on a stripped down, but extremely secure, Linux operating system, featuring the Squid web proxy cache, and a firewall with Layer 7 filtering, running on a standard PC. The system runs from a CD, and is impossible to be modified by a malicious attacker.
Nildram's level of support and customer service has been exceptional...they have delivered an extremely cost effective solution.
"Unlike a new 2Mbps leased line at £18,000 p.a., our current system cost just over £1,000 to set up and has an annual expenditure of under £4,500 exc. VAT - and that is for a 12Mbps connection," explains Jeremy.
Oakham School has now been able to completely remove the old leased line as the new system has proved so reliable. Jeremy continues, "We now have a static IP address block and perform all our web hosting, email and remote access through the bonded connection and it works very well. We have also moved the home Internet connections of Oakham's Information Systems staff to Nildram for excellent remote access and technical support.
Nildram:
"Nildram were amazing throughout the installation," Jeremy points out. "Their level of support and customer service has been exceptional and they have delivered an extremely cost effective solution. We now have a much better system than before and have more slack in the budget for other IT projects that will be of direct benefit to students and the school. It's also refreshing to find that you can actually get to talk to people involved in technical development at Nildram, rather than just first line telephone support operators."
Please note: Bonded services are no longer available as part of the Nildram portfolio. For an alternative, cost-effective, solution please call our Sales Team to discuss your requirements on 0800 197 1474.