>Hi, Bruce -- but CF internet presence providers *do* exist -- and they
>aren't that much more costly than IPPs that don't offer CF.
>
Hi Kathy
Yes, I suppose that is an option. Schools in Queensland are quite into
computers now, especially high schools. All Queensland schools are
connected via a statewide (WAN) intranet and then to the internet. They
used to all have their own internet connections also. Most of the schools
have labs of computers networked right across the school, running anything
from NT to Novell to Unix/Linux to Macs... or all the above. These can be
quite big with hundreds of computers in a large high school.
I think they would try to isolate the use of something like CF. They
already do programming courses using stuff like Pascal, VB etc. The
security aspects will have to be though through. I'm sure if they are
really keen they could find the hardware somewhere though with our dollar
dropping and the retail price of CF being US$995.... I see from a local
distributor that it costs A$958.00 (workgroup) - A$1863.00 (Pro). I might
ring and check education prices.
To give you some idea of the size of the setups in some schools, below is a
school in Victoria which has itself set up pretty well :) I must admit not
many have gone this far and Queensland schools no longer need to with the
statewide network.
thanks
Bruce
--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 01:40:56 +1000
From: Peter Harvie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: QL: Cost Control of Fast Internet Connections and Volume Charges
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MIME-version: 1.0
Precedence: bulk
BACKGROUND
In response to several requests for more details about how our school
operates our Internet services, I hope the following info is of use to
other schools.
The Internet and our Intranet are core information and communication tools
in our College. Our students have constant access to about 360 networked
PCs which are in all classrooms and in a few labs. There is also a
multimedia centre with 60 PCs where students can go in their 'free'
periods. All 110 staff have notebook computers.
The College provides thirty 56K dialup modems for our students and eight
33.6K modems for staff. Numerous College resources are now Web-enabled, FTP
accessible or available via Citrix Winframe if it is software or CD-ROMs
and delivered via modem to student's homes 24-hours per day. We are also an
ISP with several hundred cients.
During 1998 we will Web-enable all of our curriculum and adminstration
resources in a variety of formats including streamed audio and video. IP
video conferencing or the use of Netmeeting over the Internet figure
prominently in student's daily lives.
Fast Internet access via a fast, cost-effective Internet Connection is a
critical issue in the College to support all of our curriculum outcomes.
Our students have open access to the Internet from all PCs and are only
restricted by the College's Code of Conduct.
In 1997, with just a 128K ISDN connection, our Internet volume and telco
charges exceeded $60,000 which could not be sustained.
SOLVING an EXPENSIVE INTERNET VOLUME CHARGE PROBLEM
The College wanted to provide very fast Internet connection for its daily
needs but knew what would happen if did in increased volume charges as
students became excited with their new found access speed. In 1997 we
contracted a local company to produced GAIA NetCharger software. We
implemented the software at the start of the 1998 school year.
The software uses the NT user database to automatically produce its own
GAIA NetCharger database.
The software can be set to charge users whatever the school is paying per
megabyte for volume. Proxy cache data can be charged at a different rate if
required. Intranet data can be excluded from charging.
Users can be allocated any dollar value to begin with. Once that amount is
used they can pay for more. They can still use our Intranet if they can not
afford to pay for more Internet access.
This software reads the proxy server logs once per day. This log contains
all the neccessary user information and debits student's GAIA NetCharger
accounts.
Some data evades the proxy logs such as our email and the Microsoft Proxy
Server itself when it automatically updates. We have observed that there
are about 25% volume overheads that have to be accounted for in the
charging. This has to be added to what students are being charged per
megabyte to break even.
The software also looks for restricted site data every day. This is posted
in a special log file which allows administrators to easily check for
breaches of the College's Code of Conduct. Very few breaches now occur.
The most commonly visited sites are also logged, the numbers of users that
have registered is shown, details of each user's daily volume accessed and
total dollars charged out are available.
Users can check their present balance via a Web page.
We provided every student with around 60Mbytes of data each. Teachers
300Mbytes each. Around $25,000 was allocated for total 1998 Internet volume
usage.
The bottom line is that we can now totally control our Internet volume
costs regardless of our Internet connection speed.
COST-EFFECTIVELY CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET AT HIGH SPEED
As soon as we had the GAIA NetCharger software operating we installed a
satellite Internet connection. It was 'only' a 2Mbit connection at first
but has now been expanded to 4Mbit. The solution we use means our bandwidth
is automatically upgraded up to 8Mbits as more bandwidth is purchased by
our provider. Some additional hardware has to be purchased once we go past
8Mbit.
This satellite Internet connection had a once-off hardware cost of $10,000
plus Internet Volume charges. Compared to 128K ISDN at over $4,000 per
year, this is a cheap investment as this equipment could still be sold for
$4-5K even after a couple of years. Victoria has a point-to-point network
(Vic-One) being established to interconnect all government schools and
institutions and the YEARLY cost of a 2Mbit Internet connection to that
service is around $100,000 plus Internet Volume charges.
Over 80% of total Internet traffic at our College is downloaded. We are
still using our 128K ISDN for the return traffic. We have costed (around
$15,000 at present) and site-surveyed a 2Mbit spread-spectrum radio link
for our return traffic and will probably use this as the return traffic
solution. The aim is to vastly increase the return path bandwidth for heavy
video traffic and to remove recurrent costs.
Downloads are now usually done at around 15Kbytes per second. Multiple
dowmloads or video sessions can occur simultaneously at that speed. Net
latency appears to be the main limiting factor.
The bottom line is that there is now adequate bandwidth or future bandwidth
upgrade paths to do anything we require on the Internet.
More information is available at:
http://www.bssc.edu.au/tech_support/bssc_network/index.htm
Peter Harvie
Technology Development Manager
Bendigo Senior Secondary College
Rosalind Park
Bendigo 3550
Australia
http://www.bssc.edu.au
FAX 61-03 54414 548 Phone 61-0354-431 222 Mobile 0417 837-006
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
