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Old 19th August 2008
dk_netsvil dk_netsvil is offline
Real Name: Devon
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: New York
Posts: 75
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I run a medium sized ISP and there are so many details involved in defining your traffic requirements that your best bet might be to try and find someone who will allow you to grow and renegotiate your contract quarterly. Given that 1 Mbps rate-limited connections can provide for approximately 308 Gigs of monthly traffic you would need to know what volume of traffic is destined for web, email, ftp and other uses like backups. Unfortunately there is no one-size fits all definition for how much bandwidth a site with X number of users is going to consume - variables like the average page size served, availability of downloads, frequency of indexing (if that's something you need done), and the availability of web-based forms will have an impact.

Additionally, the number of email users, file sizes, attachment limitations, etc will all play a role in the volume of bandwidth you need available for you.

Many of my e-commerce customers require better than 20 Mbps for at least one quarter of the year which amounts to several gigs of data per month before mail, backup and FTP traffic is added in. Some ISPs offer you rate-limited bandwidth which is capped - 1,2,4,X Mbps and others will offer so many gigs per month with a per-gig cost for bandwidth overages. For those worried about costs spiraling out of control I generally recommend a rate-limited service over the all-you-can-eat model.

It sounds, though, like you are considering having a dedicated line (T1) delivered to your facility. Since many ISPs provide what they call a business class DSL/Broadband/WiMax connection you may want to see what kind of service is available in your area, but you also have to consider whether or not you're going to require VoIP service in the future, which doesn't require it's own dedicated connection but it sure helps, you should be aware of your facilities raw data requirements for office traffic which is a function of number of users, etc, as well.

Even a small office can saturate a 6 Mbps connection - and many providers offer non-symmetrical ul/dl rates.

I may be biased, because I'm a racker, but I'm not a huge fan of the in-house web presence. For those who make their living using their web system I think colocation is the way to go - not only is the bandwidth allowance generally more reasonable but your local facility can suffer all manner of trauma without directly affecting your cash-cow.
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