I'm an IT assistant and am attempting a download of CentOS for a webserver. It's a 3.9 gig DVD ISO and whenever I start the download, or any download for that matter, it will max out at 300kbps, seems slow for a business internet connection...anyways then people start calling saying the phones aren't working properly and that they are losing their connection in Wyoming (we're in Michigan).
Is this normal for a medium sized business network? Basically I can't download anything at full speed because it chokes off our T1 line and everyone else at our other locations starts to lag...is there anything i can do about this?
Edit: I just found out that all of our locations proxy back to our main office where I am located and go out to the internet through here. That seems like a ton of wasted bandwidth to me.
It's not that normal really, not for a medium sized business as most of those wouldn't have a T1 line with no bandwidth management - a small company with no interest in their IT perhaps but not a medium sized one already using that link for VoIP.
Basically a T1 line is VERY slow by 2010 standards and your traffic should be managed by your router; allowing VoIP traffic highest priority and regular downloads to work but not kill a link.
There is something you can do; invest - in link speed, routers and most important skilled people to set them up.
We have the same issue. I think the issue is that some websites, Microsoft comes to mind, it will give you all of its download power and your internet connection will use this to its advantage. I would download an ISO from Microsoft and the whole internet would come to a crawl as well.
We did 2 things:
I know that these are not exactly answers you're looking for but I wanted to share my experience with you. Hope this helps.
If you have 3Mbit/s download you are on multiple T1 lines that are bonded together. A single T1 is 1.544 Mbit/s.
In my company with ~50 employees and no satellite offices we have 4 T1 lines. 2 of the lines are bonded to give 3Mbit/s down/up and the other 2 lines are used for the phone system and analog fax lines. You should try to find out what you really have. If its only two T1 lines and you have all that going you need to add more T1 lines. If you have more lines and are seeing this behavior you need to look at your router/firewall/switches and reconfigure/replace/upgrade as needed.
When I started working here we had the same amount of employees and half as many T1 lines. Seriously you shouldn't be comparing your home cable modem connection to proper T1 configurations. I'd love to have more bandwidth but really 3Mbit/s up/down is more than I have to have to keep things running smoothly around here.
So is it normal for a mid size company to max out at 300kbps downloads as reported by the browser? YES
Is it normal for that to cause problems with your phones or other critical systems? NO
you could alway add independent dsl line for your tech's to use as their gateway, so huge download arn't using bandwidth in you own internet based wan.
you can configure two outgoing gateways on your network, one for 'normal users' one for tech's.