How to Test Your T1?

lawpoop asks: "We have a T1 line for our building with a local ISP. Right now, we're looking for competitive bids from different companies. The local guy is offering a good price, but the larger guys are saying he may be overselling the T1 service through a DS-3. He swears he's not. So, how do I tell? The sales guys say 'There's bandwidth meters on the web,' but they fail to mention exactly how I can tell if I have a true T1. I've tried a half-dozen bandwith meters on various websites, and the results are highly variable. We've gotten 300-900 Kbps. Each site has disclaimers as to internet traffic, time of day, etc. Furthermore, we split the T1 out over a hub with two other tenants in the building. I'm coming through from behind that hub. How can I tell for certain that I'm getting a full T1? A service tech with a line tester? Any dead-on bandwith meters? What would an oversold T1 read out to be as compared to a true T1? If the larger guys are trying to scare me to their service with stories of oversold T1s, I need to know that they aren't doing it also!"

Comments

well, one way

[joekool]

I think you found the way, but you forgot to include the address for your site.

Forgive the trolling, but this has to be said

[AntiTuX]

3 things:
1. tell your boss to fire you, and hire someone with clue.
2. you have a router, use it, dipshit.
3. see #1 and #2.

Jesus christ, do you think the router's there just to look at?

Re:Forgive the trolling, but this has to be said

[Jonny Ringo]

But what about those holes in the router?
sales guy: yeah, those are speed holes.. oh and a I almost forgot here's you free bread sticks

I'll tell you exactly how

[matusa]

I run the network for the dorm here. I know that we have 1.544Mbps full duplex on both T1s because of...

P2P software. Yessir, these suckers are fully saturated at all times as the year goes on =)

Seriously though, the way I've tested is get a machine a few hops away, and start moving as many bits as you can. I use RRDtool to track everything, and it works quite excellently. I have multiple graphs, which collect data using SNMP directly from the routers...

matusa

Re:4 letters

[The Bungi]

The first post is (Score:5, Informative)

From an Anonymous Coward...

...ok Satan, you can take me now.

Man was I wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I had a T1 but it kept asking if I had seen John Conner, turns out I got a T1000! Word to the wise NEVER shop with Cyberdine!
-Jason

Re:4 letters

[spongman]

He can't hear you. There's a blizzard going on down there right now.

This'll work...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Write up a short story that says your company uses Linux because they hate Microsoft. Then, place that story as an HTML page on a a webserver on that T1. Submit the story to Slashdot. (don't worry, it'll get posted.)

If you're not getting enough hits to it from Slashot, put a small Flash animation on the page. This will infuriate the users, they'll bitch about it and cause more people to hit your site.

If your server catches fire, then your T1 is up to speed.

How we did it

[FrostedWheat]

Still using a T1? We used those ages ago, upgraded a bit since then.

We tested our T1 by sending it out to destroy a small village. It turned out that it wasn't water proof, and was quickly stopped.

We are up to the T1000 now, just about to send it on it's first test to. The lawyers couldn't do anything about them humans reverse engineering our model T101 CPU, even when threatened with the DMCA. So we hope this will sort them out.

Re:A Full T1 is ...

[dasmegabyte]

Wow.

That is officially the geekiest post I've ever seen on slashdot. I didn't undestand a thing and it turns me on.