Re: [Coworking] Solution for lots of people streaming music

[Randall G. Arnold]

You're right Alex, and I definitely should have raised the same point you raised about video vs audio.   One thing I've noticed though is that *some* start these ventures on a shoestring and throttle themselves at the incoming service.  In such cases I can see managers being concerned about loads.  Your point about monitoring overall and individual usage is right on and important for those cases.   I would recommend that space starters/managers invest in the fastest connection they can afford.  It's not directly relevant but even in my own home bandwidth became an issue once every member of the household had a laptop and smartphone Plus Xbox, Roku, etc), and I had Verizon FIOS with 25 mb download.  Going to 50 mb plan and a wireless N router led to a definite improvement.   Randy Tarrant Makers     On February 17, 2014 at 12:00 PM Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com> wrote: Quotas and bandwidth limiters are tricky to implement correctly, and in my experience end up generating even more issues than they solve.    Music streaming itself is usuallypretty low-impact - even at higher quality streams like 192kbps, it takes a LOT of streams to really add up to something noticeable. Video streams, on the other hand, can put a dent in bandwidth really quickly. Though we've definitely had issues with our internet, we've never actually run into a situation where we "ran out of bandwidth".    Every "bandwidth" issue we've had actually ended up not being a bandwidth issue at all, but some sort of network behavior that triggered a throttle upstream with our internet provider. Burst bandwidth speeds would stay normal, but ping times would go WAY up, making everything feel slow (which is as bad as it actually being slow).    We've actually had more issues with designers who sync big PSDs to Dropbox all day than we have with ANY entertainment media. And that's a tough one, because people use Dropbox to be productive.    Two recommendations:    1) there's a mac app called PeakHour (available in the app store) that connects to many popular routers and lets you monitor inbound/outbound bandwidth. It sits in the menu bar and lets you easily notice when there's heavy traffic usage.    See if PeakHour graphs seem to match the slowdowns that you're noticing, which will be easier b/c the graph is always handy in real time.    2) Depending on your router, you may be able to inspect the bandwidth usage on a per-user basis. If you can figure out who those users are, I'd be very surprised if you didn't find that a couple of people are unknowingly doing something that's triggering your network to feel slow.    -Alex             --   /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Randall G. Arnold <randall.arn...@texrat.net> wrote: I'm sure every shared space runs into bandwidth hogs.  Ultimately you need to craft a usage policy of some sort, trying to find balance between fun/work.  It's only natural that you'll identify some forbidden uses (porn, et al) if not immediately then over time as the need develops.   I would suggest to music streamers that they should use their mobile plans for that, and that the space bandwidth is for productivity.  Blocking certain services outright, as corporate environs tend to, can get sticky but you may have no choice if users insist on hogging bandwidth for entertainment purposes and it impacts those trying to actually get work done.   You can also set quotas per IP address, from your router, and let each user determine how they want to use that allocation.   Randy Tarrant Makers   On February 17, 2014 at 11:27 AM Angel Kwiatkowski < fccowork...@gmail.com> wrote: Looks like about everyone is streaming music while at Cohere so it's putting a strain on our bandwidth. Has your space had this issue and what are some solutions?   Angel   -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.   Randall (Randy) Arnold Developer and Enthusiast Advocate http://texrat.net +18177396806   -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.   -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.   Randall (Randy) Arnold Developer and Enthusiast Advocate http://texrat.net +18177396806 -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.