[LINK] Benefits of a digital economy enabled by the National

Jamie Sunderland Jamie.Sunderland at aarnet.edu.au
Thu Sep 23 16:59:06 AEST 2010


Hi All,

The interesting thing to note with that survey is that fibre to the school (and similarly for TAFE) does not necessarily mean they have large bandwidth. This is generally because the service is provided as a rate-limited bitstream service (usually in the form of an MPLS tunnel to the state government hub or similar). And this rate-limit is set by carrier pricing rather than the physical full-rate of the optics.

In reality this means that most schools are running their fibre connections at DSL speeds. (Survey says 67% under 4Mbit and 30% between 5 and 20Mbit ... that’s 97% at or below DSL2+ speeds over fibre - although it may have improved a bit since then).

For Uni's the situation is very different. The Uni's, through AARNet own most of the fibre and transmission systems required to provide connectivity using optical wavelengths at full rate of (currently) 1G or 10G. AARNet provides contention-free tail circuits, regional backhaul, national backbone and international circuits.

Hopefully over the next few years with the NBN and the work Evan's team are doing, we will be able to see fibre connected Schools and TAFES get to a stage were their bandwidth usage is likewise a function of user demand and appropriate content filtering, rather than artificially rate-limited tail-circuits and congested access to the Internet.

Regards, Jamie.


Jamie Sunderland
t.+61 2 9779 6971   m.0419 100 573  w. www.aarnet.edu.au
-------

-----Original Message-----
From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Marghanita da Cruz
Sent: Thursday, 23 September 2010 2:42 PM
To: Richard Chirgwin
Cc: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [LINK] Benefits of a digital economy enabled by the National

Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>   Evan - many thanks!
> 
> The upshot is that we don't "need" the NBN for schools and unis, because 
> in one case fibre is being done, in the other it's already done.
> 

According to the survey, not quite for schools, and I would 
interpret Evan's  reply not yet for TAFEs and is $100million 
enough to finish the job - note the Satellite reliance:

> Similar to the 2008 survey, the 2009 responses show that the majority of schools in metropolitan and 
> provincial regions are connected by fibre. The responses indicate that 50.3 per cent of schools in 
> metropolitan regions (51.6 per cent in 2008) and 46.1 per cent of schools in provincial regions (46.5 per 
> cent in 2008) are connected by fibre.   
>  
> Although DSL remains the second most used technology by schools in metropolitan and provincial regions, 
> the percentage of schools connected by DSL has decreased compared to the 2008 survey. The 2009 survey 
> indicates that 37.8 per cent of schools in metropolitan regions (42.5 per cent in 2008) and 41.5 per cent 
> (42.2 per cent in 2008) of schools in provincial regions are connected by DSL.   
>  
> Of those schools in remote regions, 44.6 per cent reported using DSL (41.4 per cent in 2008), 20.1 per cent 
> use satellite technology (20.4 per cent in 2008) and 19.4 per cent use fibre (20.4 per cent in 2008).   
>  
> 4.  Bandwidth used by schools 
>  
> Although the use of fibre connections by schools in 2009 (46.5 per cent) is similar to the 2008 survey results 
> (47.0 per cent), the download speeds used by schools has improved. 67.5 per cent use download speeds of 
> 4 megabits per second or less compared to 80.5 per cent in the 2008 survey. The improvement in schools’ 
> download speeds are in the 5‐20 mbps range. In 2009, 29.7 per cent of schools reported this speed 
> compared to 16.4 per cent in 2008.  These improvements relate to schools across all sectors. See Diagram 6 
> below.   
>  
> The 2009 survey results indicate there remains a variation in the bandwidth used by schools in 
> metropolitan and those in provincial and remote regions.  The proportion of schools in the 4 megabits per 
> second or less range is lower in metropolitan schools in 2009 at 60 per cent (75.7 per cent in 2008) and 
> higher in provincial and remote areas at 75.6 per cent (87.1 per cent in 2008) and 81.8 per cent (84.4 per 
> cent in 2008) respectively. The low download speeds used by schools in provincial and remote regions 
> appear to be due to affordability of the service or the specific contractual arrangements negotiated. 
>  



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