Re: Bandwidth Customer ratios

Rick Kunze ( rkunze@colusanet.com )
Fri, 12 Dec 1997 09:07:13 -0800

FWIW,

First thing you have to consider, is whether all your users are local. If
they aren't, 20:1 might fly in my opinion. My business's experience says
it's closer to half that.

Regarding # of phone lines, the more lines you have, the more you can push
the ratio. But in my experience, if you have only 5 or 10 lines, don't go
over 10:1. You'll just have to watch it in order to determine your actual
numbers. As you add more and more lines, you can stretch this ratio to 12
or 13:1 before you'll start seeing "all lines in use." Remember, you won't
*get* phone calls from 90% of the unhappy ppl. They'll just fail to renew.

I believe that the industry norm is around 12.6:1. (Unlimited local use)

Regarding bandwidth, you have to consider what your users will be doing. I
opened a pop in an isolated, rural town of 5000. In that case, web
browsing was all they knew. Web browsing represents a duty cycle of 10% or
even less. (Most of the time they're sitting there looking at the screen.)
In this case, you can easily run 10 lines or even 15, on a 56K circuit.
But when someone like Microsoft releases the newest browser, watch out!
Everyone suddenly starts doing downloads, and you can expect your users to
suddenly see poor throughput.

There is no definitive source for this "formula." The best thing to do, is
to simply watch your activity.

HTH

Rk
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