Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 22:00:46 -0500 (EST) From: BCPL.NET SysAdmin To: BCPL.NET News Subject: BCPL.NET NEWS: Bandwidth To Internet Increased ------------------------------- BANDWIDTH TO INTERNET INCREASED ------------------------------- In a BCPL.NET News message sent out on Thursday morning, I wrote: "At 3:00 PM today (Thursday, November 1) we will take down BCPL.NET's connection to the rest of the Internet in order to install a new router and bring up a faster connection. The work should take about 30 minutes, barring a visit from Murphy and his pesky law." Well, good old Murphy did pay us a visit Thursday afternoon. We ran into problems, so couldn't complete the work until Friday morning. That's what caused the brief service outage some of you may have noticed shortly after 11:00 AM. Sorry about that, but it was unavoidable. For the technically inclined, here's what it was all about: Since April 2000 our access to the rest of the Internet has been via three T1 data lines connecting BCPL.NET to UUNET Technologies, our primary "upstream provider". Three T1 lines are capable of carrying 4.6 Mbps (megabits per second) in each direction, which in April 2000 seemed like a healthy increase over the 3 Mbps we had previously (two T1 lines). However in recent months we have seen bandwidth usage on those three T1 lines increase dramatically, to the point where sometimes during peak business hours we were trying to move more data than three T1 lines could handle. As of about 11:00 AM today our connection to UUNET is via a T3 line. A full T3 line can carry 44.736 Mbps, roughly the equivalent of 28 T1 lines. Now, before you get all excited about that, a full T3 is VERY expensive and way more bandwidth than we need. What we now have is "tiered" T3 service, which allows us to select how much bandwidth we want to use (and pay for). Currently we are configured for 6.3 Mbps, roughly the equivalent of four T1 lines. This should solve our immediate bandwidth problems. If in future we need more, upgrading to the next tier (9.5 Mbps) is a simple configuration change (and larger payment, of course). Chip -- BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES 320 York Road Towson, MD 21204-5179 U.S.A. CONTACTS: -------- Web Site: http://www.bcpl.net Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Domain Name Service Issues: dnsadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091