Webmaster forum - Bandwidth vs. Users - 8.5mbit/s How Many Users?

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Bandwidth vs. Users - 8.5mbit/s How Many Users?

Spam Catcher

2007-10-31, 4:16 am

Hi all,

I'm about to launch a new site and the connection I have has approximately
8.5mbit/s of upstream bandwidth.

Is there a way to guesstimate how many users the connection can sustain?

The average page on my site is ~400 - 450KB with graphics. Users will visit
between 5 - 10 pages. I do have GZIP compression turned on, so that would
reduce my outbound data traffic a bit.

Does anyone have any formulas I can use to guess the number of users I can
support (comfortably) concurrently with 8.5MBit's of upstream?

Thanks!

On another note, I did some FTP download tests and I couldn't seem to break
past 4mbit/s over VPN. However, doing browser speed tests I could get
9.5mbit/s down and 8.5 mbit/s up. I wonder if the VPN FTP test is really
affecting performance that much.

Mark Goodge

2007-10-31, 4:16 am

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:07:27 GMT, Spam Catcher put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm about to launch a new site and the connection I have has approximately
>8.5mbit/s of upstream bandwidth.
>
>Is there a way to guesstimate how many users the connection can sustain?
>
>The average page on my site is ~400 - 450KB with graphics. Users will visit
>between 5 - 10 pages. I do have GZIP compression turned on, so that would
>reduce my outbound data traffic a bit.
>
>Does anyone have any formulas I can use to guess the number of users I can
>support (comfortably) concurrently with 8.5MBit's of upstream?

Server bandwidth is rarely the limiting issue these days. In any case,
bandwidth desn't limit users in the sense of there being a maximum it
can sustain - all it does is make the site appear slower when the pipe
is full. If you're genuinely concerned about that, then reduce the
size of your pages - 450k is too big, you should be aiming at a
maximum of around 150k (and less for the home page).

A more likely problem, if your site is popular, will be the ability of
the server to cope with the necessary number of simultaneous
connections. Whether you can do anything about that depends on the
type of hosting you're using.

For comparison, I look after a site which is one of the most popular
in its field (Google PR of 6, Alexa rank of around 80,000). That has a
2Mb connection to the outside world, and that's never been a limiting
factor. The biggest bottleneck on the site is the mysql server, which
has trouble meeting demand.

Mark
--
http://www.MotorwayServices.info - read and share comments and opinons
"Time is a valuable thing, watch it fly by as the pendulum swings"

Auggie

2007-10-31, 4:16 am

"Spam Catcher" <spamhoneypot@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:Xns99DA1452A600usenethoneypotrogers@127.0.0.1...
> Hi all,
>
> I'm about to launch a new site and the connection I have has approximately
> 8.5mbit/s of upstream bandwidth.
>
> Is there a way to guesstimate how many users the connection can sustain?
>
> The average page on my site is ~400 - 450KB with graphics. Users will
> visit
> between 5 - 10 pages. I do have GZIP compression turned on, so that would
> reduce my outbound data traffic a bit.
>
> Does anyone have any formulas I can use to guess the number of users I can
> support (comfortably) concurrently with 8.5MBit's of upstream?

There isn't really an easy answer to your question.

You can do some easy math and figure out the whole "at max speed versus page
size I can serve up..."

But that doesn't really apply much to the real world because most people on
the internet don't have the bandwidth speeds to pull down pages at that
speed.

You also have to figure out how busy you are going to be:
If you have a 400KB page and somebody with standard DSL comes to your site
they'll probably need 2-3 seconds to pull down the file. That means AT MAX
SPEED (you and them) you should be able to serve up 5-6 concurrent
connections.

Most people aren't really going to be connecting at full speed, so lets say
your site won't start experiencing bandwidth congestion unless it has 10 or
more simultaneous connections. The question here is: will your site be so
busy that you have to actually worry, that with connections lasting only 2-3
seconds, that you are going to have 10 or more happening often enough where
it should be a concern?

Spam Catcher

2007-10-31, 7:18 pm

"Auggie" <Imperial.Palace@Rome.It> wrote in
news:ZAWVi.46673$GO5.2963@edtnps90:

> Most people aren't really going to be connecting at full speed, so
> lets say your site won't start experiencing bandwidth congestion
> unless it has 10 or more simultaneous connections. The question here
> is: will your site be so busy that you have to actually worry, that
> with connections lasting only 2-3 seconds, that you are going to have
> 10 or more happening often enough where it should be a concern?

True... It'll be great if I had that many users at once.

Thanks for the replies!