Looking for how much bandwidth to purchase for a small – mid sized org.

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Hi tech gurus,

For an office with 40 staff, who work on office tasks that require a normal amount of bandwidth (no 3D CAD drawing uploads), how much bandwidth is the right amount of bandwidth?

My requirement is to save dollars as all the money that is saved will go back into services at a non-profit.

I currently have one T1 (1.5Mbps) from my contract which is expiring. Other options are 10Mbps, 50Mbps or somewhere in-between. I am in the downtown of a major city so fiber, ethernet over copper, and coaxial are all options.

Thanks,
Peter

P.S. Is there a better forum in which to post this on Windows Secrets?

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Can you tell us what sort of things you do over the link? Internet only? Opening files?
Have you got stats on the current use?
As much info as you can provide please?

cheers, Paul

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Currently, during the hours of 10am – 4pm we are generally maxing out our T1.

Business internet uses include:
General browsing (for 40 staff)
Occasional streaming of online workforce development training videos
Custom web based database and report generation for a database of 4000 people (used by 20 staff)
Web-based appointment scheduling (used by 6 staff)
VPN from home

Non-business uses:
Streaming radio (which can be blocked if needed)
Non-business video streaming, news, etc. (which can’t easily be blocked because of the need for video described above).

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The current ADSL offerings are in the region of 20Mb/s download, 2Mb/s upload, already faster than your T1, but you can get much better upload ratios if you pay a bit more. If you go to a fibre connection you should see 30Mb/s – 5Mb/s depending on provider. A DSL circuit would cost a lot more for not much gain, but you do get nice upload speed.

If you want to go for a cheaper ADSL offering and are worried about over-utilisation, put a bandwidth limiter in front of the router – something like smoothwall is free and good. You may even find that the router can do the work for you.

cheers, Paul

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