How much bandwidth/Storage would I need?

[Quickersee]

I am considering implementing a site that offers free "Office" (Word, excel, frontpage, powerpoint types of programs) software for use from a central server that my company would run. How much bandwidth/Data transfer would be needed to allow 1 million people to use the site at the same time. Customer files would be stored on the customers "home" computers not by use. The site would store no customer information except for names, passwords, etc.

We have a site that will generate lots of traffic and I am thinking of implementing free "office" software also. We would use the software of one of Microsoft many competing companies.

The site that we derive income from is Buzzfon.com a Bay Area VOIP company.

[PartieHonteuse]

Mind if I ask what kind of server OS this will be running on? To answer your original question. It all depends on what needs to be sent over the network. That is not something nobody can answer for you. To test this out, if this were me, I would download a packet sniffer on the server and on a test client. On the server I would log packets coming out of the server on this certain port that's being used for your "office" package setup and on the client setup teh packet sniffer to log incoming packets on wahtever port is needed for your "office" package to run. After doing about a months worth of logs I'd then get an average of packets on each machine then multiply it by 1,000,000 to get at least a starting point of how much download bandwidth you'd need a month to run this thing. That'll at least give you a benchmark to start with and then once you launch this thing I'm sure you could upgrade the amount of bandwitdh you'd need from your provider as soon as you'd need it or just pay the overage fees depending on the package you've signed up with on your provider.

Now, not only would I be worried about bandwidth I would also be worried about server resources (i.e. processer usage, RAM usage, disk space, etc. etc.). And then on top of that, security. I obviously don't know what kind of service this will be but think about what you're putting into it and what you're getting back. You might be losing more than you would be getting.

Also, I don't know what "office" like package you'll be using and it doesn't seem like it's going to be Microsoft since you said something about using software from one of Microsofts competitors. Not sure if you've talked to them about this but if you plan on having 1 million people access a central location for a package this might go against their License agreement. I'm not lawyer but I do think this actually goes against GNU/GPL licenses.

On top of that, why would someone want to do this? Unless it's for the fun/learning experience. I mean, why would I want to connect to what I could only imagine would be some kind of terminal server to access office applications especially when there's an issue of 100% connectivity when it would cost me absolutely nothing to go to openoffice.org and download their package (which is free) and not have to worry about connecting to the internet. Another thing...if in your original question you've found that your server is sending a lot of requests (and uses a lot of bandwidth) to a client to access/use this office feature you might want to think about how many of these clients have bandwidth caps from their ISP's. I've seen a lot of ISP's that offer broadband internet are now setting monthly bandwidth caps. So i'd also think about your target "audience".

I hope that this has somewhat helped you in your original question and maybe gave you some other things to think about before you went ahead with this project.

Partie™

[galena1]

Very informative, Partie.

[PartieHonteuse]

Thanks!