Student House Setup

Raevinn said:
We got our line installed recently and now we're trying to decide what line to get. Theres 11 of us, but only about 3 to 5 will be on at the same time. I was thinking an uncapped 512 bundle from mweb, would this be ok? We just wanna browse, and we'll have one person manage big downloads that will run while we're sleeping.
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Hi Raevinn

I would recommend a MWEB business product, this type of product will better suit your needs
Please see link below for pricing and information:

http://www.mweb.co.za/adsl/?p=business

Regards
MWEB Operations
 
Before half the people on this forum get absolutely hysterical because the MWeb rep suggested the MORE EXPENSIVE business product (completely unjustified suggestion! MWeb is always so damned interested in just making more and more money!), go back and read about the requirements. Up to 11 people sharing a line, and EACH one (presumably) expecting to be able to USE that line to do their email, watch some streaming video, etc. With shaping on Connect accounts, the "already-poor" experience is divided between as many people as are using the line at the same time. So yes, I would agree that the unshaped business account is a better option. More expensive of course. But the cost of a 4mbps line and rental divided by 11 people is about R225 each. Not bad per month for a permanent, uncapped, unshaped 4mbps connection. Of course, everybody in the house has to agree to this and pay their portion, etc. The cheaper option will work, but performance will be poor, and then there is the possibility of more weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here when it is determined that a nice cheap 384kbps shaped account is USELESS! USELESS! EPIC FAIL! when used by 11 people :)
 
SabreWolfy said:
Before half the people on this forum get absolutely hysterical because the MWeb rep suggested the MORE EXPENSIVE business product (completely unjustified suggestion! MWeb is always so damned interested in just making more and more money!), go back and read about the requirements. Up to 11 people sharing a line, and EACH one (presumably) expecting to be able to USE that line to do their email, watch some streaming video, etc. With shaping on Connect accounts, the "already-poor" experience is divided between as many people as are using the line at the same time. So yes, I would agree that the unshaped business account is a better option. More expensive of course. But the cost of a 4mbps line and rental divided by 11 people is about R225 each. Not bad per month for a permanent, uncapped, unshaped 4mbps connection. Of course, everybody in the house has to agree to this and pay their portion, etc. The cheaper option will work, but performance will be poor, and then there is the possibility of more weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here when it is determined that a nice cheap 384kbps shaped account is USELESS! USELESS! EPIC FAIL! when used by 11 people :)
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Yeah. But these are students.

1. The business solution is for a twelve month contract.
2. The bulk of the downloads will be video or music (high bandwidth)
3. They are not going to want a 'state of the art' product, just something that sort of works (ie. VDub over Merc)
4. They need the cheapest option.
5. Same as 4.

:~)
 
Rinkhals said:
Yeah. But these are students.

1. The business solution is for a twelve month contract.
2. The bulk of the downloads will be video or music (high bandwidth)
3. They are not going to want a 'state of the art' product, just something that sort of works (ie. VDub over Merc)
4. They need the cheapest option.
5. Same as 4.

:~)
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Yeah, fair enough, points taken. You get what you pay for. I was just anticipating future posts (by one of these students for example) saying how useless MWeb uncapped accounts are and how they can't download anything or even stream a video. What they wouldn't say is that 11 of them are sharing a 384kbps shaped line :)
 
If your looking at cost then I would do

1.Telkom Phone Line (Monthly Rental) R112
2. MWEB All Inclusive R899
3. Downstorm 30gig R189

Total R1200
Divide that by 11
R109 per person for uncapped shaped 4meg internet.

Then you set up your downloads on downstorm, get one person to run a file share in the house. And then download at night using a download manager.
 
Hi Raevinn, this is my experience in a student environment.

I currently run a network for over 300 users, with the web surfing all based on 4Mbit ADSL internet. I use load balancing and various rules to negotiate web access between a number of lines and and ISP's. Though for a few years I had separate physical gateways. Generally though, in those days I never had more than 30/40 users on concurrently. 11 users is easily done on a 4Mbit line, and trust me, I was doing this with the lower end 1Mbit lines when they first came out, and the higher speed 4Mbit is a huge difference. So don't even think about considering the 512 option.

On our student network, by far, the largest areas of usage is social networking... Facebook, youtube and any other streaming are the largest surfed areas. Of course I block most p2p, so that isn't an issue. I am sure it will be if it was allowed. So a 4Mbit will be fine as long as you stay away from p2p, or control it. Though good luck with the controlling as I find users often have no idea what constitutes a bandwidth hog website and will just download whatever they want. So after years of experience, either I provide tons of bandwidth, cap users, or block it. Currently I cap and block. So if you think you can educate your users not to do certain things, then good luck. Possibly you need to have a rule which is "don't download anything", unless your users really understand the difference between say rapidshare and/or the latest antivirus download.

There is also a big difference between male and female users. Males tend to get involved with p2p, while females just want social networking. They usually get their p2p from their boyfriends.

I have used various ISP's and tried various uncapped and capped options. Personally, I have now begun to stay away from uncapped accounts as they are so inconsistent. Some days they are fine during the day, and other times they drop to 512K or lower. The problem is you may not have the budget for a capped option, and it maybe more difficult to manage with possible fluctuating prices each month to spread between 11 users. I think the MWEB uncapped accounts seem to be the best on the MyBB forums, so if you choose an uncapped, then I would go with that. Redeemer30's suggestion I think would be the best for your needs as it gives the best of all worlds.
Anyway, that is my 2 cents.
 
thanks a lot for the input guys :D I now have a pretty good idea on what we need, looks like its gonna be a little bit more expensive than most of us thought it would be, but worth it :D also I have a rapidshare account so downstorm won't be that important. R150 a person roughly
 
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