Bandwidth Requirements

What does your ISP provider say? I'm guessing that you want to minimize your expenses. How slow do you want your service to be?

Do you have any idea what their bandwidth requirements might be? Demographics? Any?

The utilization factor cannot be divined from thin air. Beirut could have any number of different use patterns. Nuf said.

5 Mbps x 64 would be a starting point.

My favorite factor is 42.

Good luck.

I think you need to talk to your local ISP first as the value is likely country and contract specific. What may be acceptable in one country may not be acceptable in another.

Can someone come up with a formula or something?

Ok, using a binomial distribution based on 100 active subscribers results in an estimated 20% utilisation factor.

So.......Total Bandwidth * Customers * utilisation factor = 5Mbps * 64 * 0.2 = 64Mbps

Link

Hope this helps.

I run a Meraki Mesh network, and get 1.9 mb to about 25 average customers, phone and computer, for about 5 gigabytes of download per day. Extrapolate from that. 5 megabytes seems a bit high, but promise it anyway. Start with 25 megabytes feed, and let the provider know that you won't put up with being throttled at all, and keep track of it. Look at Meraki. It's perfect for your situation. www.meraki.com (They don't pay me anything to tell you their system works reliably.)

I can't give you a usage factor but we are providing wireless internet to about 70 residential users at 2Mbps with a nominal feed that is claimed to be 30Mbps full duplex. We have not "hit the wall" by running up against the service provider limits.

We bandwidth shape by limiting heavy users to 2Mbps for about 5 minutes before dropping them back to .5Mbps. This controls large file movements like movie downloads and the like. Without this shaping we have had kids get on torrent file sharing sites and put our system on its knees. We also limit the total GB allowed per month by charging extra if the limit is exceeded. This tends to make the usage more restrained.

We are planning on moving to 4Mbps/1Mbps and do not expect problems with our feed.

Obviously, your question is a moving target and what your end users are expecting is what you need to try to establish. I would expect residential users would be more forgiving of occasional slow speeds on their service. If your service provider can offer you several levels of service you can start at wherever you think is about right and move up if necessary.

Hope this helps,

Jon.