Download How do schools connect to internet

Case study - Estonia
In Estonia there is no uniform system to connect schools. Most schools are owned by
local authorities, who often decide about (and pay for) the internet connection. They
choose ISP and equipment via local tenders, no help from NREN or official rules by
government. However, it is possible to apply to Tiger Leap Foundation for support for
financing the IT purchases and for building Internet connections; such projects have to be
co-financed by at least 50% by local governments. Ministry of Education and Research
has not set rules about to what conditions an Internet connection of a school should have;
the general attitude is that all schools should have some kind of internet connection.
Educational institutions of all levels can connect to EENet. Slightly over 20% of all
primary and secondary schools are connected to EENet, others to commercial providers.
In 1997 EENet got some funding from Tiger Leap project for connecting schools. Why
EENet? EENet had already experiences with connecting the very first schools in Estonia,
required competence and specialists. So it was considered a natural part of EENet work.
General model: schools themselves or local authorities pay for their communication
equipment and for the access network to the EENet PoP.
Using EENet's backbone and international connection is free for all clients of EENet. I.e.
since the beginning of EENet in 1993 until now the clients have had to pay only to the
operators of the last mile only, not to EENet.
Connection technology: leased lines (in the beginning analogue lines, digital lines and
copper; today only those who could get copper), wireless (smaller towns or villages),
optic fiber.
Main provider of leased lines has been and is Elion Ettevõtted AS (former Estonian
Telephone) as it is the only firm having infrastructure almost everywhere. Some years
ago small enterprises were created by enthusiasts in smaller towns/villages for building
wireless LAN-s there and offering to different institutions and people access to different
networks (academic, commercial, governmental); today several of them have joined or
left the market as it is difficult to compete with Elion's ADSL services.
In towns: the prefferred technology is to build optical MAN with connection to EENet
PoP. This optical MAN is later owned by local authority who pays maintenance costs;
permanent connection for schools is free. Such MAN is in operation in Tartu where all
schools use 100Mbps connection; similar MANs are being built in Viljandi and Paide,
projects prepared for Narva and Jõgeva. In 2005 this model has been encouraged by
Tiger Leap Foundations funding: EENet has applied for funding on behalf of local
governments and acts as technical supervisor for the project; actual funding agreements
are/will be signed by the local government and Tiger Leap Foundation.
EENet services:
EENet concludes data communications agreements (DCA) with client institutions.
Those agreements cover either one or multiple services for each of those institutions from
following set:
mailboxes in EENet server
webhosting in EENet server
permanent connection
Every institution appoints in the DCA for further communication an administration and a
technical contact person, with whom the EENet contacts if there are changes or problems
in services, service breaks, changes in governing documents etc.
Connectivity:
No recommendations concerning connection method, capacity, routers, local networks,
servers (of course EENet will advise if asked).
No QoS requirements or recommendations on access network
Router chosen, paid for and managed by client (EENet not involved)
EENet however monitors comm. port on their side and contacts school or/and operator if
something is wrong.
Mail service: schools may have their own mail servers or can get several (50, 100, ..)
mailboxes in EENet's mail server. In latter case an annex to the schools DCA will be
prepared and signed.
Package includes: incoming&outgoing server, initial 100 MB mailbox, virus&spam
filtering on server, several aliases, virtual domain, webmail portals.
Webhosting:
webhosting space for projects upon request (practically unlimited), content policy in
DCA and AUP, PHP+MySQL, EENet logo compulsory.
EENet's Supervisory Board which is headed by the chancellor of the Ministry of
Education and Research decided in sommer 2005 that starting from 01.01.2006 EENet
has to start charging all clients for maiboxes and webhosting (25 EEK[1.6 €]
/month/website; the same price for 1-50 mailboxes; 20 EEK will be added for the next 50
mailboxes – i.e. the schools pay for possibility to use several mailboxes, not for every
single mailbox). This new arrangement means considerable rise of labor in management
of those two services (accounting, invoicing, reminders for late payers etc); the income
for the services will be low. In addition the end of free service by EENet has caused
already some institutions to cancel using of EENet services and to look for another free
service.
Connectivity shall remain free, same goes for hosting teaching materials prepared by
teachers and made available at http://www.koolielu.edu.ee/.
Other included services:
 IP registration
 Domain registration and DNS
 No chat service, no forums
 No multicast, no QoS,
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No content filtering
Security newsletter, no services (firewall, ACLs)
How-To-s in Estonian (for installing and using freeware)
Mailing lists
Eduroam started in 2005
Videoconferencing – EENet may record the event at school and broadcast it on
Microsoft server
Content management support – joint project with Tallinn university, EENet will
host a CMS
User support is mainly provided through technical contact persons of the institutions,
however, in case somebody else calls, he/she will receive an answer as well.
Since April 1994 EENet has been maintaining a database (www.edu.ee) with data of all
Estonian schools - contact data, headmaster, number of pupils, school web page and
school general e-mail-address. According to the law passed in 2004 the ministry has
started the State Register of Estonian Education and when this register will be fully
operative, the EENet's database of schools might be closed.
No requirements or recommendations about e-mail or security apart from EENet AUP.
The rest as Q&A:
Bandwidth of schools connected to the NREN backbone (what percentage at what
capacity - only approximate numbers please)
19 primary schools:
53% up to 256kbps
47% over 256kbps, up to 1 Mbps
41 basic schools:
38% up to 256kbps
48% over 256kbps, up to 1 Mbps
7% over 1 Mbps, up to 10 Mbps
7% over 10 Mbps, up to 100 Mbps
65 secondary schools:
17% up to 256kbps
35% over 256kbps, up to 1 Mbps
23% over 1 Mbps, up to 10 Mbps
25% over 10 Mbps, up to 100 Mbps
Is there any organised and/or subsidized way of providing individual access for
teachers/students from home (via ISDN, xDSL, cable)?
Schools can apply for individual wireless access to EENet for a teacher. If approved,
teacher receives IP from EENet to use from home. About 100 teachers use this.
Independently from EENet, University covers ADSL costs for professors.
Is NREN involved in producing content for schools ?
No.
Do NREN seek indemnity from claims by parents, pupils, schools or ISPs?
No.What claims?
How many persons (technical, other) of the NREN are involved in work for schools ?
Let’s say two person equivalents of total 20 work for schools.
Who is paying whom, for what and how much ?
Leased line models: school or LA pays directly to the operator (Elion) for the leased line
to EENet PoP; in some cases school/LA pays this to EENet (no surcharge) and EENet
transfers it to operater.
Wireless: school to operator for access to EENet.
Cost model in case of new optical MANs: for example in one small town the
maintenance costs per institution will be (according to the agreement between the builder
and town government) 590 EEK/month and the town government will pay for all 11
schools.
Why is the NREN involved as it is ? (facts, not philosophy)
According to the statues of EENet:
“EENet shall provide Internet backbone and international connection services and shall
carry out the administration of the backbone network and of the connections between the
backbone network and the IT systems of customers for legal persons and state and local
government agencies active in the fields of education, research and culture (herein and
hereinafter customers), who are not engaged in commercial activities in the network.”
http://www.eenet.ee/EENet/statutes2004.html
Economy of scale is also a part of the reasoning, the other is that commercial ISPs still
don’t offer high BW connections.
It is economically reasonable not to run a high speed network for just universities and
research institutions, but to allow also the schools and other educational institutions to
use it. The running costs of the backbone will not be higher because of that, the resources
will just be used more wisely and for wider clientele.
However, the signals by the Ministry about serving the schools are not that clear.
While EENet doesn’t hold schools to be strategically crucial for their existence –
universities come first at any rate – they admit schools are also an important user
segment which forms a significant part of their image..
Does the NREN intend to provide more or fewer services for schools in future years ?
Why ?
It depends from the decisions of the Supervising Board.
EENet's primary mission is to serve the universities and research. EENet itself is ready to
continue providing to schools at least the current range of services as well as introduse
new ones.
What is it the NREN does better than commercial ISPs (what's NREN added value?)
More friendly, better user support, noticeably shorter response time, users get the feeling
they have more influence on the service (they do, too!)
Services not provided by commercial ISP’s:
- true broadband (for those with access to optical infrastructure)
- unlimited disk space for free, virtual domain mail/web servers, nice webmail portals
Are other entities (schools, ministry, local authority commercial ISPs, infrastructure
providers, MANs, Regional networks, telecommunication regulator etc) satisfied with the
arrangement or would they like some changes ?
Telco sometimes interprets EENet as a competitor, which actually is not true. Many
services offered by EENet to schools need renting some other services from Telco and
thereby existence of NREN means rather big income for Telco.
EENet reasons that schools are relatively poor but demanding users – selling internet to
households and SME’s is far more profitable at lesser effort. Besides schools always want
something new, their users are curious, sometimes even troublemaking hackers…
In future they envision more content hosting (CMS servers, Moodle…VLE’s in general)