Current trends in capacity planning and oversubscription

Wed Nov 10 16:47:48 UTC 2010

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> 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?
>
>

As someone else has said I've never seen K-12 with remotely that high
of a ratio, or, really, any educational institution.  UofM here in
Missoula, MT doesn't have anywhere near those ratios for internet
services nor for the campus network.  I don't have any exact details
but I'm pretty certain there's no 10 Gig-E there.  I'm not even sure
if the building-to-building links are 1 Gig-E in all cases.

Actually...I'm not sure anywhere has that high of a ratio here in the
states, at least for wired connectivity.  The carriers here all keep
the prices nice and high to preserve their profit margins in the face
of losing their long distance and traditional POTS cash cows as people
move more to cell phones and other non POTS carriers.