Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Re: T1 and ADSL

To answer your first question, yes, 300 users could put a large strain on a single T1. ADSL would probably help you out for a bit but the more and more we use the internet it will probably just be a bandaid for a larger problem. If I could make a few
suggestions I would do a few things.

First, I would look into a metro-ethernet/metro-fiber connection. This is an internet connection that can be built to whatever your demands are. You could start out with a 2-6MB connection and when you need to add more bandwidth due to growth your ISP
just needs adjust the QoS. We just upgraded our 10MB up/down connection to a 20MB up/down connection. The change took less than an hour. We use this for 800ish users.

The second thing I would suggest is to make sure you have control of your bandwidth. Use some sort of packet shaping device like an Allot Netenforcer or Packeteer to prevent bandwidth intensive apps like p2p and movie/audio streaming to hog all of your
bandwidth.

Justin Dover
Harpeth Hall School
615-346-0082

A forum for independent school educators <ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 8:21 AM -0600 wrote:
>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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