[K12OSN] another bandwidth question

[Shawn Powers]

Jay Pfaffman said:
> My question is, "how many users will
> a T1 typically support?"  Do many schools have a fatter pipe than a T1?

Web browsing folks, a ton.  2 years ago, we shared a T1 with a neighboring
district, and had approximately 500 concurrent users browsing the web.   I
also turned all web-caching OFF on my server (it couldn't handle the load,
and I needed the filtering) and we barely tickled the bandwidth.

You need to ask:

1) is it truly a T1 line, or just a DSL line @ 1.5mbit.  My cisco training
is getting old, so I can't explain the why, but I can tell you first hand
there is a significant difference in performance.  A true frame relay T1
line is pretty decent for a ton of web browsers.

2) are you really just web/emailing on the line?  If he's concerned about
saturating the line with browsing, you'd have to be a mighty big district,
and your ltsp mini-labs won't make a dent.

3) if he's worried about the downloads of his Star Trek episodes, and the
latest SG-1 episodes -- he should do those at night anyway.  (as I stand
up in the crowd, "My name is Shawn, and I'm a geek...")

4) ask nicely for a trial run, get kids surfing to beat heck, and see if
it touches his bandwidth.  He probably has mrtg graphs so he could watch. 
It would be best if you ask him HIS opinion on whether or not the traffic
spike is too much, that way you yield to his knowledge, and he might be
less "against" the idea.

Good luck, I hope it works out for you!

-Shawn

-- 
Shawn Powers
Technology Director
Inland Lakes Schools
PHN: 231-238-6868 x9174
FAX: 509-356-7024
spowers at inlandlakes.org
http://techcorner.inlandlakes.org

--<Disclaimer, now required for frustrating reasons>--
The views, opinions, visions, thoughts, comments, sarcastic whims,
forecasts, poetic outbursts, cynical wit, future plans, implementation
ideas, OS preference, curricular insight, ice cream preference, or
anything else I might infer are not the views of Inland Lakes Schools. 
Pretty much everything I say, do, think, or imply with punctuation should
be considered my own delusions, and ignored completely.