Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Re: T1 and ADSL

Before making a decision you should really try to get a profile of your traffic. If you have a T-1 you may have access to that data from your service provider or you may be able to pull it from a device on your network (e.g. a firewall or switch). This will give you an objective measurement of how much of the t-1 is being used and weather it is in-bound/ out-bound or both that is the problem. You can buy devices to profile your traffic (e.g. how much is YouTube vs email), and there are a number of FOSS products that can help (e.g. MRTG) but start with what you already have.

You say that the network slows but the details are important. If it slows for the class but not the rest of the school then it could be an internal network issue affecting that classroom. If the entire school sees things slow down (e.g. printing, file transfers to servers, etc.) then it is probably a switching issue that has nothing to do with the T-1 either. Depending on your program a T-1 could be plenty or not nearly enough. I work with a similar sized school that has yet to max out DSL and a seen a smaller program with heavy student laptop use max them out. Having the data will give you an objective measurement of where to get the biggest bang for your buck.

_J


____________________________
Jason at jasonpj@yahoo.com


________________________________
From: Rob Thomson <rob_thomson@MONTCREST.ON.CA>
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 9:21:50 AM
Subject: T1 and ADSL

I am a new IT Director at a k8 school. I come from the teaching side of things and will slowly be
picking up on the technical.

We currently have a T1 line for 300 students. When a class runs certain online applications (online
typing, Voicethread...) the network slows to a frustrating speed. It has been suggested that we
continue to use our T1 line for outgoing traffic (e-mail, FileMaker remote access...) and add an ADSL
line to handle all incoming web.

2 questions:
Should I be experiencing this slowdown with a T1 line?
Is the proposed addition of an ADSL line a good cure?

Thank you for your time,

Rob Thomson
IT Director
Montcrest School
Toronto, ON
rob_thomson@montcrest.on.ca

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