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Are Web Pages Getting Larger?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a large multinational in a remote part of world. Our connectivity to the outside world (the Internet as well as company communications) is all done via a single E1 line - that's 2Mbps. Thousands of users. The company keeps access pretty well screwed down for security reasons, and the fact that our link to the outside world costs almost $300K/year! Our growing problem is Internet traffic. While policing of non-business use is very active, Internet traffic continues to grow. I'm becoming convinced that one of our problems is that average web page size is growing. As more of the world enjoys broadband access, I think web developers have less reason to limit the size of their web pages. Large images, flash animations and other size-increasing content seem increasingly common. Am I right? Can anyone point to a recent study that would support my theory, and help me convince my management that we just plain need more bandwidth?"
You need to change policy, not spend more money. Change the cache settings on clients. Insert caching proxy servers. Make sure mail, DNS, etc. is local. Et cetera. You should find a solution that does not have a linear (at best) relationship with the number of users.
Web pages are getting larger. It might be what is causing your increase in utilization, but to me it's hard to believe (although if your users are viewing a lot of embedded videos, that's another story). And, if it's hard for me to believe, it's probably going to be hard for your PHB to believe, too.