A bandwidth question?

Need "bandwidth for dummies" answers

[starec]

Our provider has been taken over by competition and we have to renegotiate the contract. They've send us our bandwidth graphs and ask us to choose 64 kbps or 128 kbpsbandwidth. They suggest 64kbps.

I tried to get some insight searching, but it looks like I know so little about this issue that I can't even find the right search phrase to get some answer.

So, what should be the relation between the connection bandwith and the max, min or average real bandwidth used? How can I check that the real bandwidth numbers they showed us are real? Any rule of thumb of average page size/pageviews/bandwidth relation?

[ggrot]

I'm no expert, but I'm fairly sure of my answer. The bandwidth options they are offering you are the maximum at any given point in time. So you have to analyze what you expect to be your normal peak during the day/week/month/special event. If it is only just above 64kbps and only for a short time, I'd let it slide. If you expect it to peak higher often for large amounts of time, then you need to go with the higher bandwidth. Did that make sense?

[Topcat]

Firstly, ggrot's advice sounds good. It also sounds like the provider is being pretty straight(or not very good salespeople!) with you. It could have been easy to try to up-sell you the more expensive option.

The whole issue can be tricky. If you had not been independantly logging the bandwidth, you have no real way of knowing whether the graphs presented are correct. You'd just have to trust them, I guess.

Not sure if you are talking about a primarily outbound (ISP) connection or whether you are hosting a site on a leased line inbound arrangment. It's also dependant upon where you are. In Indonesia (where I am) on an ISP connection you can get 64Kbps but this is the speed only to the local ISP. When it goes out across the internet, it is reduced to a maximum of 25% (8Kbps) although it is typically 3Kbps.

Page size/speed. There are 8 bits to a byte. Average page size might be around 32KB (Kilo Bytes), so 256 kbits. On a true 64Kbps connection = 4 secs. This is for a fully loaded page and why it's a good idea to always size the images on a page. The browser knows how much space to allocate and therefore can render the text before all the images drop in.

Think that's right.

TC

[starec]

Thanks. Looking at the graphs it is above 64 kbps more than half of the time. So I guess I have to go for the 128 option... Wish I could find some site to read more about these things...