The snappiest e-business site is no good unless it has the network
bandwidth to deliver it to customers
The wants and needs of human beings always expand to fit
available means. When the Government built more lanes on the M25,
people simply drove more cars to fill them.
Network bandwidth has the same problem. Bandwidth is the "size"
of the connection that you use to push data from one point to
another, and is generally measured in megabits per second (Mbps).
It is a vital part of any electronic commerce solution, because
customersaccessingyour e-business site will be looking for a fast,
responsive service. You can only provide this if you can push
enough data down the line to many customers at once.
There are three elements of bandwidth to consider. The first is
the bandwidth between your Internet service provider (ISP) and the
Internet exchange, (in England, this is the London INternet
eXchange, or LINX). Go with a larger ISP that has a direct
connection, rather than a small player that rents bandwidth from
another ISP.
The second and third elements of bandwidth are closely related.
They concern the bandwidth between your e-business server and the
ISP itself, along with the bandwidth between your e-business server
and any legacy line-of-business applications it has to hook
into.
Established enterprises will have existing back-end IT systems
handling elements such as order processing and stock control, and
the e-business infrastructure will be an add-on to that. Bandwidth
will be needed to send data between these two components.
E-business start-ups, by contrast will have the opportunity to
integrate back-end applications with e-business systems running on
the same machine.
Connecting your e-business server to an ISP is very easy if you
co-locate your e-business server at its site. If you do this, you
will be likely to use the same types of bandwidth connection that
you use to connect multiple servers together, or to hook your
servers to your storage infrastructure. If you want to host your
e-business server farm at your own location for ease of management
and updates, things get a little more complicated. The long
external connection turns it from a local area network (Lan) into a
wide area network (Wan), and the bandwidth for Wans is
traditionally lower.
Traditional options for your Wan include ISDN and Frame Relay.
ATM has appeared as a very high-speed service in the past four
years and now newer technologies are emerging in the form of DSL
and cable modems.
The problem with most early forms of DSL is that they are based
on the ADSL standard, and therefore geared primarily towards
consumers. Although ADSL allows a lot of data to be received by an
ADSL user, (generally around 2Mbps), it doesn't allow very much
data to be sent.
As an e-business provider, you need to send out much more data
than you receive, making current forms of DSL unsuitable as the
means of communication between an e-business site and its ISP.
The important thing when considering bandwidth is to make sure
that it is expandable. It is unlikely that you'll need a huge ATM
connection between your site and your ISP, unless you intend to be
the next Amazon straight away. Nevertheless, a link with room for
growth - and ideally the ability to aggregate more than one link
together in the future - should stop your customers from feeling
the squeeze.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the capacity of the connection by which data
travels from one point to another. It is generally measured in
megabits per second (Mbps). Different networking technologies offer
different bandwidths. Your choice will depend on the location of
your e-business server and internet service provider, budget and
the size of bandwidth you need.
Wide Area Network technologies
When your e-business server is located separately from your
ISP
| ATM | up to
155Mbps |
| ISDN | 128 Kbps using two
channels |
| Frame
relay | 2Mbps |
| ADSL | Theoretically, up to
6Mbps of data can be sent down the downlink and 640Kbit/sec on the
uplink (in practice, this is restricted to roughly
2Mbps) |
Local Area Network Technologies
When your e-business server is co-located with your
ISP
| Ethernet | 10, 100 or 1,000
Mbps |
| Fibrechannel | Roughly 1,000Mbps,
scalable to 4,000Mbps |
| ATM | 155Mbps |
Tips and Tricks
- Buy bandwidth that will let you grow
- Locate your e-business server with your ISP
- Make your bandwidth resilient, so that if one link fails the
other still works
- Use an ISP with a direct link to the Internet
backbone
Terms
ADSL: asymmetric digital subscriber line
ATM: asynchronous transfer mode
DSL: digital subscriber line
ISDN: integrated services digital network