Broadband guidelines for VC
19 September 2013 at 2:24pm
During the most recent UK VC Partnerships meeting the issue of Broadband advice for schools was raised, and that Janet should present some clear guidelines to help the schools community when deciding on Broadband providers.
Those present gave their ideas, and we came up with the following:
- How much bandwidth is required? Upload and download speeds (minimum of 4meg is required for HD quality VC).Click here to see DfE advice for broadband services for schools. http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/adminandfinance/procurement/b0069801/buying/broadband
- Does the potential supplier have an efficient responsive Help desk support from qualified VC experts? Is there in conference support? Support is essential to make sure that problems are quickly resolved(SLA), so choose one that opens from 8am (or maybe even 7am is desirable), as this would still fit in with school opening hours.
- There should be some sort of SLA for packet delivery, since VC is so sensitive to packet loss.
- If Schools want to use HD or high bandwidths they will only receive that quality if another site they are conferencing with has the same HD equipment. If they are using an MCU for multipoint VC then that needs to support it too (HD and speed matching).
- Traffic shaping (restricting of non-standard ports & protocols) is a very real issue for users using public ISP's. This can have a very detrimental effect on VC, including everything from call set-up to media streams being blocked. It is recommended that schools check with potential ISP's that this will not be an issue.
- Does your broadband supplier have a help desk that works closely with Janet VC services – so they are able to connect your establishment to the national education network and allow you to securely make VC calls outside your establishment?
- Janet publish VTAS product evaluations in order to give schools some advice as to what actual hardware would best suit schools’ needs. The link to the website is https://community.ja.net/library/advisory-services/product-evaluations
