HEAnet and Ireland’s Broadband for Schools Programme

Since 2005, as part of the Irish Government’s Broadband for Schools Programme, HEAnet has acted as network manager of a centralised Schools Network that connects all Irish primary and post-primary schools to the general Internet and other global Education Networks. This equates to approximately 4,000 schools.

Under the Broadband for Schools Programme HEAnet also offer schools a portfolio of network services including: network management & monitoring; IP address management; security & filtering of content; in addition to web hosting and blog services. HEAnet also configure and remotely manage the router located at each school.

Following a re-tendering for broadband services in 2009 by the Department of Education & Science (now called Department of Education and Skills - DES), contracts for the supply of the local “last mile” broadband service were awarded across a number of Broadband Access Providers including: BT Ireland, Digiweb, eircom, Imagine, Last Mile Wireless and permaNET. This retendering process was designed to deliver improved levels of broadband to Irish schools where possible.

Access Providers are required to aggregate their respective school broadband connections at the HEAnet backbone network. HEAnet monitor Access Provider performance versus their SLA commitments in this regard and advise the DES of core network outages and the resultant penalties owed were applicable.

Schools are required to sign-up to specific levels of content filtering as prescribed by the DES.

HEAnet provide a dedicated Schools Network Operations Centre (NOC) which delivers technical support to the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) which manages a first-line Schools Broadband Service Desk on behalf of the DES. Schools can contact the NCTE Schools Broadband Service Desk at:

Tel:      1800 33 44 66
E-Mail:  servicedesk@ncte.ie