On Sun, 2003-05-11 at 11:17, Christopher Dawkins wrote:
Is this really true ? I cannot see why a school - any more than anyone else needs a symetrical Internet feed.
Averall, and at present, I agree with you, but once the school becomes a "centre of learning" with a good quantity of information and active learning material on its own intranet server, then pupils will be accessing it from home ("anytime, anywhere"). So during evenings, weekends and holidays it will need high outgoing bandwidth. There are times in the holidays when we have more outgoing than incoming.
Since the cost of the technologies falls its therefore sensible to only
install what is needed when it is needed. You have such a situation now
so your infrastructure is well matched to need. Its pretty inefficient
use of tax payers money to buy into expensive high level services that
require either a long term fixed price commitment or will not get used
to the full. Bit like buying the fastest possible processor for
future-proofing when one that is marginally slower is half the price and
the user really wouldn't notice the difference. Anyone can solve
technical problems if money is no problem. The key is to get the
solution/price equation right.
--
ian