Slashdot Mirror
A Crash Course on Network Bandwidth Metrics?
Kind of Blue asks: "I work for a small software development company in India, providing development services for a company in UK. We connect to the UK client through VPN; and our correct staff strength is around 13. We are going in for a major upgrade in our internet connection — and owing to the size of the firm, cannot afford the services of a networking expert/consultant. Hence I, a layman, have been asked to look into the matter and decide on the ISP and the bandwidth. I have a vague idea about the required bandwidth — it must be around 512 kbps(remember, it's India I am talking about!) and must be a persistent connection, since we use source control softwares connecting to servers in the UK.
There doesn't seem to be a 'networking for dummies' kind of resource on the web. No one seems to talk of network metrics anywhere. So, can Slashdot give me a crash course in what I need to know?"
"Our present ISP gives us a DSL connection of 512 kbps on 1:4 sharing. There are frequent disconnections; and hence loss of work while code check-ins. As we are increasing in strength, I am also looking at more bandwidth. But what bamboozles me is how are these things measured? Will I get a better bandwidth if I take a 512 leased line on 1:2 sharing? When the staff doubles, should I upgrade to a 512 connection on 1:1 sharing or must I take 1 Mbps on 1:4 sharing?(There's a huge price gap between the 2 here in India) In any case, how does one decide the optimum bandwidth required for a bunch of 15 developers on VPN and Source control?"
Dear slashdot:
I'm trying to outsource your jobs. However, I don't know all that I need to know. Would you mind providing free training in your spare time for your replacement?
OTOH: you probably don't need as much speed as you do reliability. I would guess that an unsharing situation will work better for you.
You might, over the short term, insert an extra hop in your network in front of the ISP hop, and measure avg bandwidth there over the course of a business day. As long as you have enough total bandwidth / second to match your typical usage (allowing for some margin, and expected growth) in a business day, all you'll cope with is some latency.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Stop calling my numbers voodoo! Libraries of Congress/Fornight is a respected measurment for bandwith and I know many people who like to have their ping times displayed as multiples of the time it takes light to travel from NY to LA (assuming a vacuum of course).
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
PS, in case you were wondering I calculated it out. My current ping to google is 6.73 trips from LA to NY at the speed of light.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
You could have figured out how much bandwidth you don't have by posting a link to your local server. Being Slashdotted would've shown your ISP you need more bandwith!
Then; Take the number of connections at your end before your connection was severed, and add that to 'half' the number of connections when your ISP's server/connection maxed out, multiply by the number of toilets in your office, and divide by Pi.
Is that a laden or unladen ray of light?
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
your developers to stop downloading porn and illegal music at work.
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
Yeah. Tubes.
I used to work at a national lab; broadest bandwidth connection between two parts of the facility (until they laid in a dedicated fiber FDDI -- this was early 90's) was a graduate student on a bike with a basket full of tapes. Depending on the student the latency wasn't too bad. Also, student+bike latency was less than automobile latency because there were always parking issues. Transmission errors were few but spectacular -- network collision between packets and free roaming deer made a mess once or twice a year.