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Terminal Server 2003: What kind of bandwidth/user?

K

Kenazo

Lifer
We run Windows 2003 Terminal Server here at work, and have about 20-25 users connected at any given time. It's fine for internal users, but anyone connecting from outside of our WAN seems to have a bit of a slow time at it.

Our upload is only 40KB/s (Stupid DSL). So, my question is, approximately how much bandwidth is needed for each user? We tell anyone connecting remotely to use the "56k modem" performance setting, which hopefully limits their bandwidth usage to a bare minimum, but it still sometimes seems a bit slow.

I'm presuming it's a bandwidth issue, not a latency issue, b/c DSL is usually pretty peppy on latency issues, right?
 
Assuming each connection takes a constant 4-5KB/s, you're already looking at >100KB/s upstream requirement..not to mention other services and connections you may be running. Time to upgrade the line to at least a full T1. This also doesn't cover the fact that the users may be running applications that are eating up resources on the terminal server itself so take that into consideration as well.
 
According to this UseNet post by a Microsoft MVP, you should estimate about 20-25kbps per user. A second poster in that discussion stated that he was running four concurrent users on a 128kbps (ISDN) line without issues.

I assume that you really did mean 40KiloBYTES/second? This would be 320kiloBITS/second. Business-level DSL nowadays typically provides 500-768kilobits/second upload speed, but that, obviously, can vary depending on your distance from the CO and what you are willing to pay for.
 
Yup, I was speaking in Bytes.

For some reason the only ISP around here only has 40 KB/s up on their business DSL accounts. At any one time we usually have around 4-5 users connecting in, from over the internet. So, it sounds like we will be pretty much maxing out our upstream when I consider these users, plus any other internet usage that might be taking place at the same time. We do host our own Exchange server as well, so any emailing would be eating into that bandwidth. Combine that with any other webbrowsing and it looks like what we really need is closer to the 80KB/s range, right?

5 external users @ 5KB/S = 25KB/s, So we'd only have 15KB/s for the rest of our internet activity... No wonder it lags sometimes.
 
Originally posted by: Kenazo
5 external users @ 5KB/S = 25KB/s, So we'd only have 15KB/s for the rest of our internet activity... No wonder it lags sometimes.
Click to expand...
You are getting into dialup modem territory on your upload speed. Of course, most of your in-house users will likely mostly be concerned with download speed. But I imagine that your users' web requests could lag because of the low uplink capacity.
 
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