Is there a tool to monitor how maxing out bandwidth effects each user?

[jpoulos]

I work for an ISP and we only have 56k dialup customers. We are trying to decide when we need to order new T1's to the internet. We know we are maxing out our bandwidth, but we are trying to determine how that effects each dialup customer. For instance, is the customer dropping from 56k to 53k or are they dropping from 56k to 26k. Does anybody know of a way to do this? Thanks in advance.

jpoulos

[mmellet]

Speeds will only change if there is problem in the modem or if there is a modem type mismatch or line errors, what do you mean by customer droppping from 56k to 53k???

[jpoulos]

We know that we are using the full bandwidth of our T1 to the internet, but we are trying to figure out how much each enduser is affected by more people logging in and using the line. For example, Your office computer downloads files slower at 10am then it would at 2am, be cause you have to share the bandwidth with more people at 10am.

Jpoulos

[mmellet]

I'm under the assumption the maximum number of users that can connect to a T1 line at a given time is only 24. If many people are not able to connect at that specified time they would have called to complain about the poor service.

[jhalldn]

Hi,

If you have a policy that will garante youre costumers a stable bandwidth within youre network (not Internet), and they always will have a bandwidth around 56, then you could plan something like this:

I suppose that you're using som TACACS/RADIUS authentication for your dialup costumers. Using the logs, you would be able to produce some statistics for a average of simultaneously connected custumers. Then you can do a basic math...average * 56 kbps = X Mbps.

When/if using aaa, you could use network accounting to se packets and bytes count. This could also be done with SNMP. MRTG can be used to plot this information.

[shope]

I am making an assumption here, that you have pops with modems and a T1 backhaul to your main network.

there are lots of management tools that will let you estimate the use, given number of online users and bandwidths in the network, but all these methods have to make assumptions.

So - why not measure what you want? - use a modem to dial into a pop at regular intervals, or when it is busy and measure the download speed - after all that is exactly what your users will see.

Once you have something that works manually, get it scripted so you just check the stats when needed.

Stephen