ADSL for my office - Which speed will i need ?

[Coza]

Hi all,

Im buy setting up new offices for one of my clients, there are only 20 users in the office, and i will limit the internet to only browsing, email and msn.

Will a 512 be enough? or will i need a 1 Meg line ?

How will skype degrade the bandwidth ?

Any ideas , guidelines ?

 

[|tera|]

I'd say get a 1meg line, it works out roughly R160 more expensive than 512, and telkom upgrades you to 4mbps free of charge at the same cost, then most of your worries will be sorted

 

[ZA_medic]

512k / 20 = 25.6k or 3.2 kB/s.

This means a 1Mb file will take 5.3 Minutes.

For basic we surfing with no large images, the users will survive at this speed. If this is, for example, a graphics design company then this speed will not work.

You need to decide if 3.2 Kb/s is enough for the employees to get their work done.

at 3.2 the users will expeiance alot of lag when using Mail, Web and IM at the same time.

 

[Coza]

ZA Medic, i see where you are coming from , but surely you'd calculate in the fact that not everyone will be using that bandwidth all the time, maybe a safe fugure would be that half of the users will use it a any give point, that doubles the available bandwidth to 6.4, and then if its a 1 meg line, then it would then double again to 12.8.

Am i safe to say that this is theoretically correct ?

 

[Scooby_Doo]

512k / 20 = 25.6k or 3.2 kB/s.

This means a 1Mb file will take 5.3 Minutes.

For basic we surfing with no large images, the users will survive at this speed. If this is, for example, a graphics design company then this speed will not work.

You need to decide if 3.2 Kb/s is enough for the employees to get their work done.

at 3.2 the users will expeiance alot of lag when using Mail, Web and IM at the same time.

He will be getting a 4mb line or atleast as close to a 4mb line as possible.

 

[ZA_medic]

Agreed - not all users will be on the same time. Its just a worst case scenario.

personally, I would agree with 4Mb - it provides you with that buffer when everyone is doing their lunch time surf.

 

[Coza]

Do you think Skype will still fit into that equation ?

 

[bwana]

Start low then go high - it costs nothing to upgrade.

 

[ZA_medic]

If Skype is required for them to do business i would go 4Mb.

The last thing you want is to have your 512 hit by lots of users and your Skype being unusable, costing the company business.

If you insist on 512k then you will need to instal something that gives priority to Skype from certain users - Dont know how to do this, I am a Developer.

 

[mh348]

get a 1meg, it should be fine

 

[MrSmith]

I would think that a company that employs 20 people should be able to spring the extra 100 odd bucks a month for the 1Mbps line. But then I suppose if they are going for an Uncapped package it would be much more than an extra R100 odd per month