Schools Database - volunteers wanted

damien

I posted this to the Volunteers Mailing List, but any volunteers here too would be appreciated.

We're looking for a good few volunteers to help us collate information about Irish Schools. What we need people to do is to use the online dsl availability checkers to see whether the phone number of schools pass or fail the dsl test or whether dsl is not available for that area where the school is.

If you wish to help with this can you email me back and state which county you live in as we have the numbers for the schools broken down by county. You will also need to have Microsoft Excel or the OpenOffice equivalent to do this research.

If you want to help out email info@irelandoffline.org with the subject Schools Database.

dahamsta

I'm doing Cork.

bealtine

There are 3925 schools in the table.
of those :

1577 are Sat technology
709 are labeled ADSL
1507 are Wireless
127 are ULL (Smart)
3 are leased line
2 are SDSL


The database is now online and can be accessed remotely if you want.
The format is MS SQL...
This should save on people duplicating their efforts.
PM me for more details.

Webmonkey

bealtine wrote:

There are 3925 schools in the table.
of those :

1577 are Sat technology
709 are labeled ADSL
1507 are Wireless
127 are ULL (Smart)
3 are leased line
2 are SDSL


The database is now online and can be accessed remotely if you want.
The format is MS SQL...
This should save on people duplicating their efforts.
PM me for more details.

You serious about that info?

Theres a lot more schools on ISDN if even that

bealtine

Webmonkey wrote:

You serious about that info?

Those are the counts based on the spreadsheet
unless I got something wrong (which I don't think I did)

Webmonkey

I thought that was probably it myself just now. Thats probably right.

eircomtribunal

Perhaps of interest with regards to the project:

The consultation report behind the School Broadband Scheme (Datanet's "Schools Broadband Connectivity Study") says on page 43:
"ADSL is available in the larger towns and cities. It is estimates that about 37% of schools (representing 60% of students) are in an ADSL area."
P.

Gone West

Im doing westmeath.
I've replied to damien about it.

thecivvie

Just emailed you, I am in NW Connemara, doubt if any schools around me are BB in any manner but I can check fully when I get back to Ireland

dahamsta

FYI, queries seem to be limited to 40-odd every 15 minutes.

I have a PHP script - run via apache, but running it from the command line is a two-line hack - that automates the process, however you'll need to pull that 40-odd out of a CSV number list every 15 minutes and run it again. If you want it, request it through IrelandOffline please.

(EDIT: Unless every 45th result just happens to be blank, which would be a bit coincidental out of a batch of 300-odd, the limit is 44 numbers every 15 minutes. Who picks 44 as a cutoff point? Particularly when the form accepts five numbers per query!)

adam

damien

FuzzyLogic wrote:

Im doing westmeath.
I've replied to damien about it.

Can you email me again. I think the IrelandOffline mail was being forwarded to JWT while I was on hols. Forwards all coming to me now again though.

cgarvey

We've been down the scripted route already .. I'd guess that it's an API they use (but would be sceptical that eircom would be that advanced), as the same limits apply to Nesource and eircom's own checker. There's also a longer IP ban put in place if you break multiple 44/45 limits in the one day).

We were looking at doing some fancy webapp thing where volunteers would request the next 5 numbers to be tested, and fill in the results for those (a means of distributing the requests), but that'd take time (to develop, and to populate with line check results), particularly as I don't have any way to tell what numbers are assigned/in use within an allocated block .. so testing millions of numbers isn't practical (unless we have thousands of volunteers!!)

.cg

ai ing

I am doing Donegal and got a question. The spreadsheet sent out doesnt reflect the change in codes last year eg 077***** for one paticular area has changed to 074 93*****. Which numbers should I work with, Im assuming i should use the new numbers but just checking to be sure.

cgarvey

If you can manage the number conversion, that'd be appreciated. I go the list from Education Ireland. If anyone knows a more up to date list, I'll happily use that. Ta.

Drag00n79

The database on education.ie is not suitable for your project. Very many schools are not listed, eg. there is only one post-primary school listed in all of County Sligo! There are many other omissions of big schools too. Why didn't you use the Department of Education database?

cgarvey

That'd be great if you can get it to me in spreadsheet/database form.. I'll copy/merge numbers then.

dahamsta

Want me to do another county? I'll be away tomorrow but taking it easy on Sunday.

adam

lucernarian

That Dept. of Education database does have all the schools but the numbers are even more outdated. For example in Meath, most numbers are 046 with 7 digits following but with the Dept. of Education database they are all 5 digit numbers. I found the best way to get around the problem was simply to use my 04 (year 2005) phonebook and use Google to find out the English for Irish placenames so I could then check the phonebook.

damien

Louth, Donegal, Cork, Kerry, Dublin City, anyone else want to pick a county and do some?

ai ing

As it was a previous place of residence Ill do Kildare.

damien

Right. We have our list done. Good few schools in DSL enabled areas are failing the line tests. Now we need to merge the Dept's list from here with our own list and see how many on DSL exchanges are getting non-dsl products as well as how many could get DSL if only eircom fixed their crappy lines.