Impact of Streaming video/audio

[Potomac]

A small corporate client has a 30 node network connected to a fairly slow dsl line (384/384 SDSL, the max available there). There are several employees who like to listen to internet radio and other streaming audio. His concern is that the streaming is affecting his internet access too much, that it is slowing down everyone else's access times. He wants me to back him up with some numbers so he can tell the employees to quit doing it. Has anyone seen any studies on this topic or have any opinions on it? Any response will be appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[ImpetusEra]

It absolutely will slow down things for the other users. Three employees listening to 128Kbps streams will saturate the 384Kb bandwidth. There's software you can get that will work with your router to have a better view of who is using the internet most for what. You could then warn individual employees they are not to be using the corporate internet resources for non-work related sites/media during working hours. Also you could monitor what internet stations they are going to and then use the router/firewall to block that site.

 

[hinesjrh]

Yes, streaming audio and similar downloads (pandora, itunes, Yahoo Lanuch, etc.) will use about as much bandwidth as it can get. On a small DSL line it will take it all. I have five T1's bonded together for Internet access. I can be here in the middle of the night when almost no one is on the network, and as a test I have streamed pandora and seen my Internet pipe usage jump up to 20%.

I use Solarwinds net engineer tools to monitor different aspects of my network. I think they have a free 30 day trial, and there are probably other free tools or free trials of other tools as well.

http://www.solarwinds.net/Tools/Network_Monitoring/Network_Perf_Monitor/index.htm