How much bandwidth is enough?12 Mar
David Coursey with CIO Magazine recently penned this article at cio.com: http://bit.ly/cNX30e
How much bandwidth is enough for your business? I enjoyed reading this article about bandwidth needs for today’s businesses. I have been in telecom for my entire post-college career with progressive experience in network operations, design, engineering, implementation, field services and senior management. I think that the article is probably fairly accurate by default – 5 mbs speeds should suffice for most businesses – however, it’s an awfully broad statement.
I still see a lot of companies with 10-20 employees being successful on a single T1 while some similarly sized companies would not dare entertain a bandwidth less than 10mb. I very rarely see a company with 50+ employees using anything less than 10mb unless they are in a very remote area where bandwidth of that size is not accessible. The differentiating factors that typically come into play are: cost, up/download speed differentiators, stability and of course end user application. You can get 10mb up/down for the same price today that a T1 cost 10 years ago. A T1 converged with 6-8 telephone lines is cheaper than a DSL with with the same 6-8 telephone lines was 4 or 5 years ago. Another thing that businesses should strongly consider is the commodity nature that bandwidth has become. Businesses should never sign more than a 2 year agreement and should shop their service every opportunity they get for better combination of price, product, service and support. If a business owner has had the same service provider for the past 6 or 7 years, chances are they are paying WAY too much for less service than they could be getting from another provider. Loyalty is out the window these days when it comes to bandwidth. Again, overall a good article and a good read.
