What should be considered for UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD speed ?

[johnpau80]

I'm completely new to this internet UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD speeds.

We have currently an existing internet service for our office with 1.2mb upload and download speed.(guaranteed thats what the ISP says).

Now we are planning to move to a new location and one of the ISP is saying that we will give 1.5-3.0 mbs Download and 400kpbs for upload for a lesser value($).

So I was thinking of this 2nd option, but wanted to know the effect with our server with these speed. This is what we do in our office:

1) Have 15 users connected to internet all the time

2) Do lot of remote support.

3) We have Citrix in our environment where users around 30-40 connect to this server and run our applications.


4) we have 5 static IP address.

 

[BenJP]

Nothing with the internet is guaranteed.

Your ISP is guaranteeing that you can transfer data to them at 1.2Mb or 400Kbs and from them at 1.2Mb or 1.5/3.0Mb, not to/from the internet. The real through put depends on the internet at that moment in time and the server/system up/down speeds you are connecting to.

That said, usually your upload speed does not need to be as high as the download speed. This is because you are normally just sending one command to a server and that sever is sending you lots data. The exception is if you are transferring large amounts of data from your systems to somebody else on the internet, then your upload speed would be bottleneck if it was too slow.

 

[KiscoKid]

It sounds like the 2nd ISP is offering you a bundled ADSL service which is indeed a lot cheaper than your existing leased line.

In my experience however (I work for an ISP), most business requirements are such that they need as much download capacity as upload capacity. And, as such, a lot of companies are now utilising SDSL (where available). SDSL is not readily available whilst ADSL generally is.

However the reduced upload capacity of ADSL may not be an issue for you depending how much traffic you anticipate will leave your network. You say you have people doing remote support. Does this mean they simply carry out remote access (low bandwidth requirement) or are they more likely to be moving files around and uploading them to remote servers (high upload requirement).

My advise would be to try and better understand your business processes regarding your Internet utilsation. If you deem it likely you will be pushing a lot of traffic out of your network, consider staying with Leased Line or moving to SDSL (if available). If you feel that generally a lot of traffic is not leaving your network then business ADSL could be a better option.

ALterntively if you're really not sure how your business is using your Internet connection, you could try calling your current ISP and request a historical utilisation graph of your connection. Most ISP's utilise something like MRTG or Concord etc that pretty much tells them how heavily utilised any particular WAN service is.

HTH

 

[ISDNman]

Assymetric offering are typicall targeted at home use. IN hom euse the need is nearly always assymetrical.

You download files, a lot more than you upload files. Your browser send a few commands to the HTML server and then the page with all the pictures and other stuff gets downloaded.

Click on a link to a PDF and the PDF is downloaded (and displayed on the browser or save on the hard drive, it matters not)

In the case of a business it all depends. If you host an FTP server or web server than you will have a lot of outward traffic and you won't want your customers waiting longer than necessary.

If you email files ot customers these will be outbound.

On the other hand some businesses have requirements more like home user.

One othe rthing to check is the SLA (Service Level Agreement). In many cases ADSL will have a much lower SLA than a T1.