To T1 or not to T1

[James Kelly]

Hello

I am interested in knowing how do you determine if a T1 connection is necessary for your building or organization. The reason i am asking this question is because recently someone told me that their company purchased T1 connections for all their locations. However the organization doesnt do alot of internet based work nor do they have alot of people in their organization. 

I am questioning if it is needed because i once worked for a school district that only had a 1 T1 connection and it supported the entire school and I was told that this organization only have a few people working on the internet say 10 and they have a T1 connection.  And they say users are stating that the connection is still slow with a T1.  So what gives am i missing something

Can you offer some suggestions how to determine if that is the best option to use a T1 and any alternatives. Plus what is a typical cost to operate a T1 and what are some less expensive alternatives

thanks in advance

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

WAN bandwidth depends on service needs.  Without knowing what users need to pull/push across such a link, you cannot really estimate whether a T1 is sufficient.  Even if a T1 is sufficient, "faster" than needed is always a nice plus.

Costing depends on multiple factors.

Alternatives today are often many if DSL, cable modem and/or MetroE are available.  Alternatives that provide access to the Internet are generally the least expensive for their bandwidth.

[James Kelly]

Hi

So how do you know..... aren't there tools or software that can measure these things or do you just take a wild guess and say i need a T1?  

I need to somehow figure out if the company is spending unnecessary money for a line that might be able to be substituted for so other technology and a solution that also has redundancy as well

[Joseph W. Doherty]

If you have an existing setup, where you can measure normal user usage, than you would know whether a T1 would be enough bandwidth.  Without that, it is almost wild guessing.

The more usage information you can obtain/measure, the less it's guessing.

I will note, now that many have home multi-megabit Internet access, users often expect similar performance at work.  T1's often, to users, seem slow.

[James Kelly]

Ok so lets say for example we have

10 users all connecting to the internet and also connecting to a remote server for files/application access

If you are at one of the computers where do you look or what software can you use to measure this usage?

Also once you find that magic number how do you figure out if a T1 is overkill or not necessary?

[James Kelly]

Then i have to apply that to figure out if lets say 13 remote locations connect to 1 location where the servers are stored. From what i gather all 13 of these locations are connected via T1 connection and if thats the case that has to be expensive. Especially if each location has about 10 to 15 computers doing basic access to those servers to that one location

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Yes, dedicated WAN connections are often expensive.  Which explains why Internet provided by cable modems, DSL, FIOS is often popular.

You can also sometimes balance off remote WAN needs by provided local services.  For example, an email server on the LAN or only across the WAN impacts WAN requirements or WAAS/WAFS impacts WAN needs.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

If you have Cisco network equipment, you often can monitor it via SNMP.  If it support Netflow, you can use tools to record and analyze that too.

You probably could find something on the host to monitor, but when possible, you monitor a transit network device.

PS:

Some Cisco devices, support (or did) built-in Corvil technology, which can tell you what's the "ideal" bandwidth (http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios/qos/configuration/guide/15_1/qos_15_1_book/qos_bndwidth_est.html).

[James Kelly]

I see so you basically have to have access to the switch or router but what if you dont...Couldnt you ask the ISP provider what is your average band width? And if the ISP provider can tell you what number that is where can you look it up on the internet that will tell you what is the best recommended medium (ie T1 DSL etc

[Joseph W. Doherty]

You can ask your ISP.  Whether then can or will help is an open question.  If not, depending on the host, the each host might capture usage statistics (or might be configured to do so).