RE: Broadband usage statistics

["Kurt" <kurtbuff () spro net>]

Get a low-end machine, such as a 400MHz PIII, stock it with a fair
amount of RAM (256MB should be fine), and put one of the free *nixes on
it, and then put ntop on it.

Put it where it can see all of the traffic that goes through your
firewall/router, and let it listen for a while.

You'll be very pleased with with the result.

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Keenan Smith [mailto:kc_smith () clark net]
| Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 07:41
| To: security-basics () securityfocus com
| Subject: Broadband usage statistics
|
|
| 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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| --------------------------------------------------------------
| --------------
|
|


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evaluating SSL VPNs' Consider NEOTERIS, chosen as leader by top analysts!
The Gartner Group just put Neoteris in the top of its Magic Quadrant,
while InStat has confirmed Neoteris as the leader in marketshare.
     
Find out why, and see how you can get plug-n-play secure remote access in
about an hour, with no client, server changes, or ongoing maintenance.
          
Visit us at: http://www.neoteris.com/promos/sf-6-9.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------