> At 14:47 -0500 12/12/97, Jim Mercer wrote:
> >we currently have a 2mbit circuit which due to the issues being discussed
> >here,
> >is highly under utilized.
> >
> >as such, i am looking for solutions which will help me maximize the
> >utilization
> >until such point that the solutions discussed here are forwarded and
> >implemented.
>
> Could you give us more detail on the nature of the traffic flowing over
> this link. In particular, I am interested in the number of users that
> simultaneously access the circuit, and whether the traffic is mainly bulk
> data transfer or mainly interactive or near-interactive?
at this point in time, there are a few clusters of pc's connected via G.703
links to the central facility, which then uses the 2mbit (also G.703) satelite
link to connect to our internet connected routers.
the link has only been operational for 2 weeks (actually quite a feat
considering we only ordered the circuit from the satelite provider 5 weeks ago).
we expect the usage to grow fairly quickly.
the nature of the link will be that of a traditional ISP.
we expect to have a number of terminal servers, as well as the campuses of a
few universities and offices of businesses to be attached in the near future.
much of the traffic will be web browsing which i guess is sorta like saying
interactive bulk transfer. 8^)
in addition to the web browsing, i would think that things like streaming
audio and video would be in demand, such as RealAudio or VDO(?).
(i have used these over the link with quite satisfactory performance, although
i can't say that the link was under any sizable load at the time).
my interest here is to find interrim solutions, as well as being able to
express in layman's terms to management why the throughput is not what they
expect.
i have found that straight telnet sessions are quite usable if you are not
expecting 5ms latency type response. (i've been doing admin work on other
satellite linked sites for a while, so i'm used to it).
as it stands, the problems will act as a natural load balance mechanism, albeit
with low throughput per session because not many commercial applications
support user configurable tcp window size.
we are considering the concept of using proxy servers for those data streams
that can easily be broken into separate segments, and have the middle segment
performed by equipment with more modern and/or suitable window sizes and TCP
modifications (RFC's 1323, 20001, 2018). this will work for some classes of
traffic, but not all.
for the time being, i am telling management that the facility is load balanced,
and a penalty of that load balance is that no one user can expect to see more
than 20-30K bytes/second throughput.
--
[ Jim Mercer Reptilian Research [email protected] +1 416 410-5633 ]
[ The telephone, for those of you who have forgotten, was a commonly used ]
[ communications technology in the days before electronic mail. ]
[ They're still easy to find in most large cities. -- Nathaniel Borenstein ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 14 2000 - 16:14:34 EST