Bear with me please, I am not much of an IT techy.
We may have the opportunity of having an internet connection provided to the unit, replacing the 3g dongle which we get our creaking service on currently.
What sort of connection should I be asking for? What does a standard Squadron ‘need’ to service BADER, Ultilearn et al?
I don’t want to end up no better off, but equally I don’t want to ask for the moon on a stick and get told to go away and stop being silly.
Can any techy or comms types advise me on what the requirement is in terms of speed and bandwidth (If those are the correct terms!)
At our squadron, and we have 10 desktops all on a lan and numerous laptops and mobile devices we make do with about a 5Mb connection through the landline. This is absolutely fine for having Bader on 3 computers at once and 4 computers in an IT room in use and we have had 14 simultaneous Ultilearn exams going on along with still being used as usual in the office. However if you want really speedy if you can get fibre optic and 20Mb would do quite well, we didn’t bother upgrading because of the extra cost just to be used 5 hours a week.
What ISPs are available in the area? Unlimited downloads? What price will you want to pay monthly? Is length of contract important? How many users (for wi-fi network, etc)? Free router &/or installation included? Will you make a potential saving by changing to a 'phone + broadband package - but 'phone calls probably are not likely to be a huge element of a sqn’s bill?
In general, the faster the better, but all depends on your budget.
Speed is not necessarily a problem with Bader or Ultilearn, they can be slowed down purely by the number of subscribers trying to access the relevant servers at the same time = sqn parade nights!
We were lucky enough to get onto BT Infinity - our previous connection was getting about 3mbps on a good day and obviously couldn’t keep up with 10+ PCs/laptops/smartphones etc connected to it.
We upgraded the connection to infinity earlier this year and we are now getting 40mbps so our very high spec network runs the way it was designed to in the first place.
The above post is spot on - you need to find out what your area is capable of. If you are in a cable-enabled area, that could be an option if infinity/fibre isnt an option.
Well done Rifle. Its about time someone came out and said what they run, in terms of SMS, Bader, Ultilearn, etc, instead of constantly coming up with excuses for having ‘connectivity’ issues. Okay, fine, it all depends on distance from exchange and all the malarky but squadrons can operate successfully on just 5Mb. You don’t have to go down the route of superfast fibre optics.
The distance from exchange really is tosh sometimes. I’m beyond 5 miles from the exchange and I get above 5 Mbps, yet apparently my local sqn which is 10 meters away from the exchange doesn’t go over 3 Mbps.
But for “3 Users” on average using the line for no more than 6 hrs a week. 3 Mbps and 10 GigaBytes Allowance is sufficent
Warning note - speeds are advertised as “up to” by many providers. If looking at ADSL via exchange, then don’t forget that in the evenings, the speeds can drop significantly as everyone hits the internet, sometimes below 1-2 Mbs download.
For example:
This may give useful indications of local speed tests: