Determine the Amount of Bandwidth Needed for the Internet Connection
The largest technical factor to consider when selecting a circuit is the amount of bandwidth (speed) needed. Most internet connections are priced based on the speed it provides. If your firm can get usage information on the internet link this is the most reliable. This is not normally available from the service provider. There are software tools that can be setup for monitoring the network that will generate very easy to read graphical reports. Most smaller organizations aren’t going to have access to this. If you have a Cisco router login and record the tx (transmit) and rx (receive) 30 second average of utilization. Divide both these values by 255 and multiply by 100 for a utilization percentage. If you have any other type of firewall or router try checking that for any measurements of usage or throughput. The device manual or a web search should be able to tell you if it’s possible to obtain from that device. If you don’t have access to raw usage information skip the next paragraph. If you can find the current reading, you will probably want to record every hour or half hour during business hours to a spreadsheet. Try to do this on two different business days and keep the transmit load separate from the receive load.
Due to the nature of networks the utilization metrics can be confusing and seem deceptive. The utilization at the peak usage should be the basis of any decisions even if it’s quite a bit higher than the rest of the day. Also make sure that the measurement is in terms of the internet link’s and not a link to an intermediate device such as a cable or DSL modem. A measurement of throughput is fine. Divide the throughput by the bandwidth provided. Keep in mind that all the connections up to the actual internet link will be significantly faster than the actual connection. Most Ethernet cables operate at 100,000 or 1,000,000 megabits per second (mbps) where the internet connection is usually only a few mbps. Your service provider can tell you what your exact bandwidth is if you don’t know it and if it’s shared with other customers. Computers accessing the network use the connection frequently, but usually only briefly. The amount of the internet connection that is used (utilization) is usually averaged over period of time, say 30 seconds or 5 minutes. As more information is forced across a network connection the longer the individual uses are and the more the uses bump into another use. If one use takes too long it will timeout or users will cancel what they are doing and try again. In general at even 80% the internet is painfully slow and above that it is not functional. If you can get access to utilization, try to keep the utilization between 30% and 60%. If you are above this value move on to step 3. If you are (consistently) below this value all day on working days consider any options for a slower or cheaper internet access.
If you don’t have access to bandwidth reporting on the internet connection you will have to do this based on some guess work. Most small firms make the decision this way and end up just fine. Most internet uses are designed for the lowest common broadband connection speed. If you have a webserver onsite make sure the larger pages load quickly during business hours from offsite. If you have an existing connection and most internet websites load within 4 seconds and seem to be reasonably fast you probably have enough. You should take an internet bandwidth test and get above 200 kbps (0.2 mbps). Ultimately if IT and management are satisfied with the speed web pages load most other internet uses will be fine too and there is enough bandwidth.
Tips: Some pages like cnn.com and yahoo.com load slower than others do such as google.com. Cached pages appear to load very fast because they are loaded from disk or a proxy rather than the web. Press F5 to reload a page if you don’t have a proxy.
Determine your need for reliability
This step takes some knowledge of the business. What business functions cannot be performed if the internet is unavailable. What are users unable to do? Are credit card transactions sent over data or a phone lines? Would it impair the ability to get product or service to the customer? Are there needed computer systems that would be become unavailable to employees or customers? If so, what is the impact if these are unavailable? Is there a webserver depending on that connection, and if so how important is that to the firm?
If your utilizing voice over internet protocol (VoIP) then an outage will create a telephone outage as well. Cell phones are fairly popular but beware this may affect there ability to call for repair or for support personnel to contact them for troubleshooting. Some people total the impact in monetary cost per hour during work hours to do a cost-benefit analysis. Remember most users have legitimate uses for occasional web access and external e-mails for work related reasons. In general the more users their are, the more the need for reliability as there are more employees affected.
Please continue to the next page: List the internet connection options.