2 Jul
Of bits and bytes and bandwidth…
One of the more interesting projects in development at Antair right now was originally intended to be a desktop application. But due to technical issues (dynamic IPs and firewalls), we’ve changed the design to implement it as a rich-client application with Antair acting as the middle-man in the cloud.
This required us to put on our big boy pants and go in search of a dedicated server to host the app.
Our current applications are essentially client apps that work with no intervention from Antair servers. This would be the first time Antair puts itself into a foundational role like this. The servers would need to be available 24/7 with minimal downtime.
The preliminary bandwidth number crunch makes me worry a bit. With conservative estimates to usage per user and number of users, we are looking at 80GB of data being transferred per day.
After hearing the numbers, one of my colleagues pointed out that we’re way off, and these are the kind of calculations that brings NASA probes crashing down to Mars.
Either he’s right, or we’re going to have to do some smart engineering to bring that number down.
Posted by Anthony presley on 02.07.08 at 8:26 am
Hmm …. I don’t know what the app actually is, but 80GB per day, depending on the app, isn’t too crazy. Backup applications certainly do that, given a big enough pipe. Is this 80GB for a single user? If so, either you’re wrong or your end user needs to have more than several T1’s in upload capacity. IE — this won’t work for anyone with a standard DSL or cable modem connection.
However 80GB * 30 days in a month = 2400GB per month. That’s only about $100 in bandwidth from some providers (email me for some information on some possible providers, if you want help). Assuming this is from many different customers, of course.
Do you have to store all of that data in raw format? That’s 2.4TB a month …. hard to do with anyone.
Posted by Andrey on 02.07.08 at 8:26 am
Hi Anthony.
Indeed this would be for all the customers — but a conservative estimate.
I wouldn’t be surprised if SaaS providers reached and beat such bandwidth numbers — it’s just a new path for Antair, and I was taken back a bit.
Posted by Matthew on 02.07.08 at 8:26 am
You may want to look at Amazon S3, it’s probably the cheapest and most scalable method if it fits your needs.
Posted by Andrey on 02.07.08 at 8:26 am
Thanks Matthew.
Amazon S3 is a storage facility (in a nutshell), and isn’t exactly what we’re looking for. We need processing power as well as simple storage. Amazon does have an app server service similar to S3, but that’s in BETA and I’m not putting production code on a beta app server.