Internet connection for a medium organisation

[Pinchy]

I have a question for a uni assignment I am doing and cant find much info on the net so I thought I would post here.

We have a company that has around 250 hosts, but the network and internet connection needs to cater for 500 hosts (future expansion). It is a computer company, so fast internet is vital.

Now they have seperate branches, but we have been told to get a net connection for the head office and the ISP will take care of each sites connection to the head office.

What I dont get is, what type of a connection would such a company use? Im assuming fibre, and like a 500mbit line (or 655mbit via OC-24)...but is that feasible? It just doesnt sound right. Like $150k per month on internet. I just dont get it lol.

Anyone know anything from experience?

[W1zzard]

i'd say 30 to 100 mbit. depending on what usage patterns your people have, how many are in the office at one time etc. ask your client's sysadmin for traffic data.

dont forget to think about a backup plan in case the isp fails, 10% of your "normal" capacity should be enough to keep operations alive without being too expensive. again, this will depend on your usage scenarios. the more money you lose per second of downtime the more you should spend on avoiding that downtime.

[newtekie1]

I would think a single T-3 or OC3 would be enough to handle 500 hosts. I know entire college campuses run on less...

I don't think you are going to need 1Mbit+ per host, that just seems extreme to me, it is unlikely that all the hosts will ever be using the connection at the exact same time. I think W1z is correct in that even a 30Mbit line would be enough.

[Kreij]

Before there was DSL available in our area, we ran our small business on one shared 56K modem.
It wasn't pretty, but it worked.
We now have about 50 hosts, but only about 12 people use the internet with any kind of regularity (mostly for e-mail), and we have a 1.5Mb connection which is sufficient (but we have no satellite offices and do not do any e-commerce).
As W1zz stated, it all depends upon the usage.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

It is a computer company, so fast internet is vital.

I don't get that logic. Why would someone who works with computers require high speed internet per se? I don't need internet at work a lot, just for e-mail. I use internet a lot though, which is not work related. Most people at my company are programmers, they don't need fast connections, they just need to do some Googling now and then.

Do you have to transfer large files regularly? Are people just serving? If it's just serving an ADSL line might be sufficient in combination with a caching proxy, ISA for example. People tend to look up the same sites (news sites, linyk spread via e-mail, etc) a lot so if those are cached locally little internet traffic is generated. Block sites like Youtube and other useless sites that tend to generate a lot of traffic.
Anything over 100Mbit should be overkill, look at what's available first though, and of course at what price.

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

I don't get that logic. Why would someone who works with computers require high speed internet per se? I don't need internet at work a lot, just for e-mail. I use internet a lot though, which is not work related. Most people at my company are programmers, they don't need fast connections, they just need to do some Googling now and then.

Do you have to transfer large files regularly? Are people just serving? If it's just serving an ADSL line might be sufficient in combination with a caching proxy, ISA for example. People tend to look up the same sites (news sites, linyk spread via e-mail, etc) a lot so if those are cached locally little internet traffic is generated. Block sites like Youtube and other useless sites that tend to generate a lot of traffic.
Anything over 100Mbit should be overkill, look at what's available first though, and of course at what price.

Yeah I know what you mean. By fast internet though, I meant like....not a 256k line to cater for 500 people. I just didnt word it right lol.

Originally Posted by newtekie1

I would think a single T-3 or OC3 would be enough to handle 500 hosts. I know entire college campuses run on less...

I don't think you are going to need 1Mbit+ per host, that just seems extreme to me, it is unlikely that all the hosts will ever be using the connection at the exact same time. I think W1z is correct in that even a 30Mbit line would be enough.

As you's can probably tell, I got nfi. Im only basing what I was thinking on where I used to work at. (EDS (now owned by HP)....we had a few hundred, if not thousand people within our state and I had a 10mbit connection on my pc alone).


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As I said, its only for an assignment and it doesnt go much into detail about the usage patterns of users and all that.

[FordGT90Concept]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

As I said, its only for an assignment and it doesnt go much into detail about the usage patterns of users and all that.

In which case, I would try get like an OC-48 (2.488 Gbps) line installed to the facility but only get an OC-1 (51.84 Mbps) plan to start with. Bump the plan up as you need more.

[Pinchy]

Thx for the replies...that should be enough to answer the question I got

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

In which case, I would try get like an OC-48 (2.488 Gbps) line installed to the facility but only get an OC-1 (51.84 Mbps) plan to start with. Bump the plan up as you need more.

Good point. Will be putting something like that in .

[Easy Rhino]

did you answer the question? so long as it is just office computers mainly then you dont need more than a 50mbit full duplex connection. a top quality router/switch and a smart IT guy could easily shape net traffic to account for daily loads.