ADSL to T1, Is it worth it for us?
- by Jack Hickerson
The company I work for has roughly 45-55 simultaneous users (local and remote/VPN) logged in at a given time. We currently subscribe to an ADSL connection but we have been experiencing slower upload/download speeds as our number of users increase. So, I have a few questions with regards to upgrading our connection to a t1 line.
I am aware that the number of channels on a t1 line are much greater then that of our current ADSL connection, but I have heard that the number of active users on a t1 line should be no greater than ~30 for optimal performance. I would think this statement is dependent on what each user was using the connection for and could change depending on this variable. That being said, I have tried to break down how the line would be used in our organization based on our major departments:
Sales (~60% of total users) - Everyday surfing, email, research, occasional streaming media
Marketing (~15% of total users) - Heavy reliance on uploading/downloading, streaming media, file sharing
Other (~25% of total users) - email, rare use of any connection intensive activities.
I have considered keeping the ADSL for our local users and dedicating the t1 to our remote users (or vice versa) but the cost is significantly higher then what we had hoped for.
All factors being equal (# of users, frequency of downloads/uploads from our current activities) Would you suspect a significant performance increase in making the transition to a t1 line from our current ADSL line?
What are your thoughts or recommendations?
