Our school's internet connection was quite impressive. (I've probably got this wrong, so if someone out there knows better, let me know.) All http connections were directed, through a series of routers, to a login screen, where each user had to log in to access the outside world. (There was no school intranet, mind you, which was silly.) Each user was allotted a fixed bandwidth, which was roughly equivalent to 1/n of the total bandwidth, where n is the number of discrete accounts in the school (students plus faculty plus a bit, so about 700). From there, all requests were funneled through a single server running BlueCoat software to filter. Now, there are two problems. First off, the filter software was physically running on a weak platform, so even a simple request took a few seconds; a hundred at the same time took ages. Secondly, each users' bandwidth was fixed. So even if there were only two people logged in in the entire school, each would receive a tiny fraction of the available bandwidth. This was the real killer: I can understand slow access during peak points, when many users are online, access might be slow, but if it's ten at night and I'm still in the school for, say, tech for a play, then there is NO REASON why I, as the only user logged on to the corporate-sized network, shouldn't have more speedy access than a 3 PM when everyone gets off class and wants to check their email.