Broadband usage statistics

["Keenan Smith" <kc_smith () clark net>]

All,

Is anybody aware of a survey or study of some sort that details a typical
user's broadband usage relative to the size of the pipe?

I'm trying to roll out a remote access solution using VPN as a secure
transport into our LAN.  So far in all cases, there has not been a problem
with system or pipe load.  However, it was suggested the other day that some
users may have maxed-out connections (hard to imagine for a single broadband
user doing mainly email and other typical office-related work maxing out
their pipe) that would make VPN an unusable solution given the extra
overhead.

Rather than waiting to find out and having to explain to my boss with a
red-faced "Duh" that I didn't know, I'd like to find out what percentage of
users regularly max-out their connection so I know if I'll have to come up
with some other way to secure a connection into our backoffice or if I'll
have to budget for extra bandwidth on the user's end.

What I need is how many people or companies, on average, max-out their
connections?  I don't believe that a single user with a cable modem or DSL
would ever have this problem, but how about a small organization of 5 or 10
people?

Some basic measurements at the last company I worked for indicated that
despite 50 users sharing a single T1 and many of them doing streaming
audio/video as well as large downloads, never went above an average 15%
utilization of a T1.

Is that typical or was that company particularly efficient in their network
usage?

Most of my info is not quantifiable so I'm looking for some hard facts and
figures.

Thanks in advance for any advice/info.

KC Smith



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