[Publib] BANDWIDTH PROBLEMS

[Michael McCulley]

Eric is onto something.. Michelle will need to both a) assess your bandwidth
needs (audit) and b) implement a "bandwidth throttle" - as these
<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bandwidth+throttle&btnG=Google+Search>
Google search sites indicate, so you can provide QoS (quality of service) to
those who need it. Lots of various solutions out there, and I suspect,
you've reached the point where you will need to take these next steps in
your environment. 
 
Best,
DrWeb
  _____  


P. Michael McCulley aka DrWeb
drweb at san.rr.com
San Diego, CA
http://drweb.typepad.com/



Quote of the Moment:
 -To err is human. To forgive is unusual.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 7:41:12 PM 

  _____  

 


  _____  

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]
On Behalf Of Arlene Sahraie
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 9:22 AM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] BANDWIDTH PROBLEMS


Greetings Publibbers:
 
I passed the exchange about bandwidth on to the techies who take care of
keeping our 73 libraries up and running.  Here are the comments from one of
them:
 
I do have to mention that patron bandwidth hogging can be a troublesome
situation, but one important thing to consider is that patron computer use
is a
very dynamic situation.  Browsing, typing, etc result in small bursts of
activity.  If you have a situation with a slow internet line, those small
bursts of activity can take longer, making more of a constant slowdown. 
Typically, internet usage is small short bursts of activity (not counting
streaming which is a slightly different beast).

    Regarding your pipe size of 512k, our libraries were upgraded from 768k
to 1152k
with an additional 384k backup pipe.  The largest number of computers that
the
1152k pipe can comfortably support in our system is 40 - past that, it gets
much
slower than its own good.  One library that has roughly 60 computers (at
least
half of which are staff) has dual 1152k T1 lines with load balancing.

     Increasing our 768k pipe has certainly relieved a lot of the bandwidth
congestion, but we aren't dealing with streaming content thus far.  Most of
our
libraries have the sound disabled on the computers which deter patrons from
streaming video/audio in the first place.  As we get more involved with
downloadable audiobook content, I am considering some sort of dynamic load
shifting on each T1 line - so that in the circumstance that every public
machine is hogging the 1152k bandwidth, the staff machines (and only those)
will be routed over the backup 384k pipe - giving them a suitable connection
for circulation/library tasks regardless of what the patrons do.

Hope this helps a bit, but to sum things up, I strongly suggest you upgrade
that
internet pipe, especially with that quantity of computers in the building!

-- 
Eric Lozauskas
Manager of Network and Unix Services
Bergen County Cooperative Library System (BCCLS)
810 Main Street
Hackensack, NJ 07601
201-489-1283 x29
 
Arlene Sahraie
Library Services Director
BCCLS - Bergen County Cooperative Library System
810 Main St.
Hackensack, NJ  07601

Tel.:  201-489-1904
FAX:  201-489-4215

www.bccls.org

arlene at bccls.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20070130/2a867d6b/attachment.htm