How Do Businesses Scale Their Bandwidth Needs?

onebadmutha asks: "I'm technology admin for a very rapidly growing company. We've gone from a fractional T-1, to supplementing that with a snappy DSL line, and now we're running out of reasonable options. I've looked at routers that load-balance, but do so horribly. I've considered splitting up my network users to use several incoming DSL lines, only to be confronted with intranet accessibility issues. None of these provide the kind of redundancy and control that I'd like, and certainly not with a nice pleasant UI that doesn't cause me great grief. I've looked at Open Source router distros (like routerOS, and others) and I've looked at using the full gamut of Microsoft madness. How do other businesses solve this problem of scaling bandwidth needs, without completely unlimited budgets for redundant OC-48 runs?"

Comments

Dark fiber Ethernet service, or fractional DS3

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how real tech companies do it. If you can get Yipes, Cogent, AboveNet, or some other dark fiber provider to serve you Ethernet service, that's the cheapest way to get a lot of bandwidth (10-100Mb/s range). If you can't, then you get a fractional DS3. Most real providers will let you dial the bandwidth up and down reasonably, so you could start out with a 5-10Mb/s circuit and grow from there.

Bonding T1s and DSL is neat and all, but if your business actually depends on the Internet working, go with one really good fat pipe and then maybe a thin one (T1 or so) as a backup. Don't mess with complex setups. Complex = new ways to fail.

Re:Dark fiber Ethernet service, or fractional DS3

[baptiste]

i can't belive he asked slashdot.. there are plenty of forums out there deticated to this type of stuff.

Why is it every time someone asks a legitimate IT question on /. the poster is ridiculed with the above statement. Every. Single. Time. I for one think /. is a GREAT place to ask questions like these. Unless you've been the 'jack of all trades' IT guy at a small company, you have no idea what it is like. You're expected to know EVERYthing. Sure - there are forums all over the place dedicated to this specialty or that specialty. And if he was a network admin only, he likely would read those forums every day.

I think /. is a great place to ask questions like these. Sure you have trolls and ACs who sometime suggest silly solutions. But you also have a LOT of hardened geeks and IT types who have been around the block a few times who make good suggestions. Already here I've seen 3 or 4 solid solutions that he can now consider and do more research on to see which fits his company best.

Asking /. a question is not a sign of a n00b or bad IT person. What better place than one of the biggest techie readerships on the Internet to ask questions. I find many Ask Slashdot threads to be very informative, filed away for 'future use'

At least you followed up the standard 'I can't believe he asked /.' with an actual, you know, answer.

OK, move along nothign to see here. I had to waste a little Karma anyway.

What exactly do you need?

[dereference]

Your "requirements" seem to be all over the map. If you want redundancy, that's one thing. If you want simply to scale, that's quite another thing. If you want partitioning, that's yet a different problem.

Then, ask yourself what kind of traffic you are handling. If you're looking at users surfing the web, you probably needn't be overly concerned with load balancing; if you're receiving tons of inbound traffic to your servers, on the other hand, not only do you need load balancing, but you probably also need to seriously consider co-location solutions for your servers.

The adminstrative traffic is typically a much lower priority in most companies. I don't know how many users you're talking about, or what they're doing, but most small companies just live with a single (full) T1 until they absolutely need to bond another T1 (where "need" is subject, but should be kept in check, especially given that last bit about not having unlimited funding).

I guess this is not much of an answer, but these are all important questions you need to be asking yourself well before seeking specific answers. I'm not sure where you're coming from, and I don't mean to accuse you of anything, but taking the approach that you'll know the right answer when you see it is usually flawed from the start.