Having more bandwidth is costly, having a lot of bandwidth is expensive! For this one week event, I brought in a 6 mbps link through Covad Wireless for $3,000. The $3,000 gives me this 6 mbps ethernet drop off with a full Class-C of IP’s for one month. What type of speeds did I actually get?
I did a bunch of tests and under the best scenario, I got about 8 mbps download and 5 mbps. Blazing speeds compared to the usual T-1 lines at 1.5 mbps. How did this bandwidth fare for the 400 wireless users? I believe there was more than 400 people, and they were not using this bandwidth to do some general browsing. The entire bandwidth spectrum was eaten up and used up. However, the network held up with good signal provided through 20 wireless access points. Sure, the bandwidth was slow but that all depends on what people use it for. In the end, no bandwidth is enough because people just do too much whether it be downloading, streaming audio or video, calling on Skype, etc.
The funny thing is when I was at the Apple store, I did a speed test and the store has a fatter link than I had which makes me wonder, what type of circuit are they pulling? I did a quick test and got about 9 mbps download and upload. Which means, they may have had more because there were other people using it which makes me conclude that they must have a DS3 capped at 10 mbps.
If you work at the Apple store, can you let me know what type of circuit you have? And how much are you paying for that? Just curious, thats all.
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