What is the most accurate method of estimating peak bandwidth requirement for a web application?

Question

I am working on a client proposal and they will need to upgrade their network infrastructure to support hosting an ASP.NET application. Essentially, I need to estimate peak

Answer 1

In lieu of a good reporting tool for bandwidth usage, you can always do a rough guesstimate.

N = Number of page views in busiest hour P = Average Page size

(N * P) /3600) = Average traffic per second.

The server itself will have a lot more internal traffic for probably db server/NAS/etc. But outward facing that should give you a very rough idea on utilization. Obviously you will need to far surpass the above value as you never want to be 100% utilized, and to allow for other traffic.

I would also not suggest using an arbitrary number like 250 users. Use the heaviest production day/hour as a reference. Double and triple if you like, but that will give you the expected distribution of user behavior if you have good log files/user auditing. It will help make your guesstimate more accurate.

As another commenter pointed out, a data center is a good idea, when redundancy and bandwidth availability become are a concern. Your needs may vary, but do not dismiss the suggestion lightly.