More bandwidth or more conservation?
Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 05:22AM You can never be too rich or too thin. - Wallis Simpson
You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much bandwidth. (Johnson’s Law of Network Capacity)
This came across my inbox this week, just as we are beginning to discuss Internet bandwidth needs in our region:
Schools Need 100 Mbps per 1000 Students
The State Educational Technology Directors Association recently released a report that set a target for broadband speeds of at least 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff for 2014-2015. The FCC has long had a program that helps school afford broadband. In fact, the FCC’s E-Rate program subsidies offset more than$20 million in Minnesota every year, historically about half of the cost. Unfortunately, total demand for 2012 is $5.237 billion. For the first time in the program, demand exceeds the $2.3 billion in funding available, without rollover funds, which indicates that some applications may not get funding. http://wp.me/p3if7-1IL
If my math is right, SETDA recommends that my district of 7500 kids and 800 staff needs about 830 Mbps - let' just call it a gig. At the current time we have 200 Mbps.
While we get some complaints about YouTube download speed (we don't block it for anyone) and we shape our bandwidth during online testing, our current access seems pretty good. (We've quadrupled the capacity in the past two years.) But I can also see some big needs coming. These include:
- Increased use of personal devices as more teachers take advantage of our BYOD plan and with everyone and their dog having a smart phone, it seems.
- Increased use of CMS (Moodle), our website, GoogleDrive, GoogleSites, e-book programs, and other educational cloud-based apps and storage.
- Increased (legitimate) use of streaming media.
- Pilot 1:1 projects.
- Increased use of externally hosted services like our library system, our data warehousing/data mining solution, and our IEP program
Let's face it. We access our payroll information online, we track our job applicants online, we access our budgets and HR files online, and we use an online helpdesk. We send our print jobs across the network to copiers and printers. Our phone system runs across our data network as do our video security cameras and door locks. Kids use GoogleDocs, Wikipedia, and the student information system portal.
I have no doubt that our bandwidth needs will grow. But something tells me we may also need to get smart about ways to conserve bandwidth as well. Prioritizing applications through packetshaping? Restricting the use of bandwidth intensive resources such as YouTube, Pandora, and Netflix. Selecting new solutions based in part on their bandwidth efficiency? Bandwidth conservation is not something I hear much about since it's not real sexy, I'm afraid.
It's a tired, but good, analogy that network bandwidth is much like the road system. Traffic seems to grow right along with increased capacity. Perhaps there is a Moore's Law of network speed that may keep us from having to conserve.
But I'm guessing we will need to both add and manage bandwidth into the foreseeable future.
Your thoughts?
Reader Comments (3)
Let me help.
The dirty secret is that, at the ISP level, they are simply putting rate limits on your based on what you'll pay. Once you are above 50 Mbps or so and on fiber instead of copper, the only technical limitations are the silly devices on the edges of networks. 100 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 1000 Mbps, 5000 Mbps, 10000 Mbps. No difference other than how much you want to pay Cisco.
In good Norweigen Bachelor Farmer fashion, I want you to imagine a world where everybody else in your community has this same issue. Round up other schools and libraries. Go to your local universities and hospitals and tell them, "It's in the mission of your organization to serve the community, right?" "Yes." Then you go to the city and find out they've been burying fiber for the last 10 years. Boom.
Put the right people in the right room at the right time with the right intentions and interest, magic stuff happens. I recently did this in Fond du Lac, WI...a bit larger than Mankato, MN. Found out that it required about 3/4 mile of fiber to hook all of those entities to the larger backbone developed over time by others.
It takes time. It's messy. Much more about people relationships than technology. But none of us are the only ones in communities thinking about these issues.
You spell conversation wrong.
Hi John,
Good advice, indeed. We are fortunate here in Mankato that we have both a good telco, a regional educational telcom consortium, and a state university. After e-rate and such both our rates and service are pretty good. WIsh I could say the same for my regional folks. We're leasing a fiber backbone among our schools for an annual rate that is less than what maintenance costs those who own their own fiber - with no upfront capital costs.
But you are absolutely right that regional consortiums by a variety of stakeholders make sense. I will bring you ideas to our next planning meeting.
Happy summer to you cheddar munchers.
Doug