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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?"
I'm not sure if you are in an area where you can get Speakeasy service, but htey allow you to bond up to four T1 lines. I have no experience with the service, but I understand that it is cheaper than a fractional T3 and they provide you with hardware that does it for you transparently. I don't know if there are other service providers that have something similar, but it seems like a good idea.
In all honesty, after looking over the intouchtechnical.com site, I'm going to go out on a limb here and tell you that you need to find which of your techs is running bittorrent all the time and either teach him how to set upload and download limits or cut him off entirely. As others have said, your posting is all over the map. You openly dismiss more than a few technologies that work quite well in competent hands. You mention fractional T1s, DSL, and OC48 as if you don't even know what they are. It really sounds like you aren't qualified to be the technology admin for a company whose business revolves around providing tech support to other businesses. Hate to say it, but that's what I see from where I'm sitting.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
The users hated me because they couldn't stream music to their desks. I would always bring them a Best Buy ad turned to the page with portable radios, CD players, and MP3 players.
First thing to do is get a hold of your firewall. Block all traffic, in and out. Then create rules to only let in and out specific traffic types with specific end points. Outbound http should only go through your web server. SMTP through your mail server. Don't let ssh out at all unless you must, and even then see if you can determine specific hosts to permit it to and from. Rate limit ssh to make it usable for remote shell access but painful for port forwarding other application types (forwarding http through ssh is an old trick to get around the company logging your web surfing activity).
Notice I mentioned a squid server. Yes, you need one of those. And yes, you need to force everyone to use it. There is a very good chance your router can do this for you transparently.
Users will scream. Loudly. Prepare yourself and your management for this. Anyone who thinks they are being treated unfairly needs to submit IN WRITING a business justification for the traffic they want you to permit, which must be approved jointly by IT and HR.
With an arrangement like this, I was able to keep over 500 users happy on a pair of bonded T1 lines. 3Mbps for 500+ users. The biggest consumer of bandwidth was the 5 person IT department pulling patches for all the different OS's we had to support. Every now and then one of the software developers would think he was being clever and find a way around the outbound blocks on the firewall using an exception in the rules that their manager got approved, but it would end quickly with a very embarassing personal visit from our Director and their own boss within a few minutes of the music streaming starting.
Broadband to the home has been a mixed blessing. People have gotten too used to having bandwidth-hungry apps at home which is fine when you have 3Mbps+ all to yourself but when you are at work and have to share it, it's time to leave the toys at home and be a considerate network citizen.
Luckily I don't have to be network cop these days. Someone else gets to do that. Someone that doesn't have a good handle on their network so they are buying way more bandwidth than they really need.