Re: Bandwidth Upgrade

[PC <paul4004 () gmail com>]

Yes, lot's of missing pieces here.

It depends on your tolerance for delayed and dropped packets during periods
of high usage, connection media type, speeds we're talking about, who your
users are, and the applications you must support.

Generally if your graphs says 75% peak usage, you should have upgraded.  If
you're output drop counters are unacceptable you also need an upgrade.

However cases with a a subrate access network (IE:  users capped at 5 meg,
on a 1000 megabit upstream pipe) can get away with running closer to
capacity a lot more than those with a few enterprise "bursty" customers who
can single handidly burst 50% of your upstream), and demand no dropped or
delayed traffic in their SLAs.

Also consider failover issues if you're redundantly connected.



On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:18 AM, Karl Clapp <kclapp () staff gwi net> wrote:

> Very true.. It is an open-ended question that can have many answers,
> especially without knowing their design...
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Keegan Holley
> <keegan.holley () sungard com>wrote:
>
> > That depends on the network configuration though.  If you have redundant
> > links and one link is at 65% and the other is at 35% or more you won't be
> > able to get through a circuit flap or outage without dropping packets.
> >
> >
> >
> > 2011/11/17 Karl Clapp <kclapp () staff gwi net>
> >
> > > Ideally, when our 95th-percentile hits 65% utilization, we begin the
> > > pricing and planning process and its up on peoples radar. Once the
> > > 95th-percentile hits 80-85% we start planning the maintenance and
> execute
> > > the upgrades. I say ideally, because in a perfect world this would
> happen
> > > 100% of the time.
> > >
> > > We try to upgrade when the 95th is at 80-85%, because the
> 95th-percentiles
> > > is based off 5-min polls, so I am sure traffic is spiking higher at peak
> > > times.
> > >
> > > Cheers..
> > >
> > > ~Karl
> > >
> > > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Bielawa, Daniel Walter <
> > > dwbielawa () liberty edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Greetings,
> > > >                My team is in the process of putting some documentation
> > > > together to justify a bandwidth upgrade. I am asking if you would be
> > > > willing to reply back to me, with how you decide that it is time to
> > > upgrade
> > > > your bandwidth. On-line or off-line reply's will be acceptable.
> > > >
> > > > Thank You
> > > >
> > > > Daniel Bielawa
> > > > Network Engineer
> > > > Liberty University Network Services
> > > >
> > > > (434)592-7987
> > > >
> > > > LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
> > > > 40 Years of Training Champions for Christ: 1971-2011