On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 10:17 -0500, Patrick Murphy wrote:
> Hi Herbert,
> 
> Monday, June 26, 2006, 3:10:38 PM, you wrote:
> 
> > How important is bandwidth?
> 
> I don't know - I assume if the colonies could have a connection that
> doesn't drop below, say, three to four times as fast as Dial-up, they
> would be satisfied for now.

Well, what you describe sounds very "bursty", so actual bandwidth
shouldn't be too bad.

> I don't think streaming video is currently desired - just basic email,
> access to on-line banking, and business-related web sites. This will
> likely expand greatly as the colonies become more familiar with the new
> options that the Internet will provide.

Well as a start this might be a good solution for you.

> I assume the base computer's connection to the Internet should be
> faster than any other colony's connection - how much improvement
> might extra bandwith give? 

Unfortunately I don't have the experience to really be able to recommend
something specific. The most important thing for the "bases" internet
connection is that it's a "symmetric" connection, meaning the upstream
bandwidth is the same as the downstream. Most consumer connections are
asymmetric which wouldn't work to well for your application (since the
limit for be the slower direction. Best idea IMHO would be to get a
symmetric connection for the base with the option of upgrading the
bandwidth, therefore if your users complain things are too slow you just
call the ISP and have them up the bandwidth.

> I assume bandwith is more a bottleneck than
> the VPN hardware?

Unless you're dealing with hundreds of VPN clients you are correct,
bandwidth will be the bottleneck. Since each colony will only be one VPN
connection you should be OK.

Good luck! :)

TTYL

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