The need for speed..
The project started a couple of years ago, around the time when localisation was on the agenda and the DfES set targets for school internet bandwidth to be:
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Primary schools – 2meg
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Secondary schools – 8meg
These targets were set a deadline for the year end 2006. To achieve this Link2ICT got together with other BSol&IT departments within the City Council to develop a new high speed network that would connect all council sites, be they schools, libraries, job centres or neighbourhood offices.
The Idea...
Working with the major telecommunications suppliers in the area we came up with a simple yet efficient network design that would make the most of the metropolitan style built up area within Birmingham and using this to save costs were applicable. Working alongside the rest of the city council Link2ICT were able to significantly reduce the cost of providing high speed links by the sheer volume of connections that would be required from the Telco. By further identifying five strategically placed district ‘points of presence’ (POP) across the city, to act as points of aggregation for circuits from city buildings, we have dramatically reduced the required distance of each circuit, up to 80%, again helping us reduce costs.
In order to connect the District POP’s, and consequently each circuit from the edge sites, the network was further developed to identify two core nodes in the city centre, one based in Council House Extension, Margaret Street, and the other based within Lancaster Circus. From each District POP a high speed Gigabit circuit is deployed back to each core node, providing both high speed access and resilience to the individual circuits aggregated in the POP, and connectivity onward to the services offered by the City Council and the BGfL Network.
For in depth information on the technology used and how it all fits together see the MPLS Technology page .
The outcome..
The end result is that Link2ICT is able to exceed the DfES targets and provide all schools with a 10Mbits connection running over a high speed resilient network, rolling out the circuits between April 2005 and May 2006. All this will be provided at a cost that is comparable with current slower 2meg copper circuits connecting the Secondary schools to the existing BGfL network.
This is, as you can imagine, a major undertaking and we would ask for your patience and co-operation during the installation and commissioning process.
Once complete we will have a world-class, cutting edge network enabling fast, secure and reliable access for all schools to local, regional and worldwide learning resources, while greatly exceeding the government targets for school internet connectivity.
For more information please e-mail
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