Current trends in capacity planning and oversubscription

Wed Nov 10 12:42:32 UTC 2010

On 11/10/2010 12:26 AM, Sean Donelan wrote:
> While the answer is always it depends, I was wondering what the current
> rules of thumb university network engineers are using for capacity
> planning and oversubscription for resnets and admin networks?
>
> For K-12, SETDA (http://www.setda.org/web/guest/2020/broadband) is
> recommending:
>
> - An external Internet connection to the Internet Service Provider of at
> least 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff
> - Internal wide area network connections from the district to each
> school and between schools of at least 1 Gbps per 1,000 students/staff
>
> How does that compare with university and enterprise network rules of
> thumb?
>

I can tell you that no one I know in K-12 or Higher Education has the 
capacity for 1GE per 1000 students. Same goes for the WAN connection.

More than likely *if* they have fiber from every school to a central 
location it's a single pair and they couldn't afford to go 10GE.  Though 
I have answered some RFPs where they wanted to know what it would cost. 
(Usually 2.5 * 1GE cost.)

I believe my Alma mater just reached 150Mbps for the 6,500 students + 
faculty.  Sure beats the 30Mbps they started with when I was a Freshmen.
I also just finished an RFP where a campus of at least 4,000 only had 
100Meg. This was in a suburban environment with at least a dozen 
carriers competing.