2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Duncan Smith -
Number of replies: 10

We are planning to invest in a web server to host our schools moodle site to give pupils access from within school & at home (1000 pupils, 30 courses eventually, but the site will be used to store resources for homeowrk, coursework etc rather than pupils working on the site using quizes etc.

Our current internet connection is 2MBits in both directions. Will this be sufficient or do we need to investigate a faster connection. The server is likely to be a 2.8 dual cpu, 2 GB RAM.

Many thanks.

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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Michael Penney -
I would say that is a bit minimal. Remeber 100 kilobytes (an average word file size) is 800 kilobits, .78 of a megabit. 5 or so students downloading a resource at the same time, and there goes most of your bandwidth.

I would try to ge at least a T1 (10mbit) line or look into esternal hosting from someone from Moodle.com.

Or at least go into with the understanding of your administrators that if it's slow its because of the minimal bandwidth, not because that PHP stuff doesn't scalesmile.
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Basil Gohar -
I have to point out a few misleading things here...sorry...;)

1)  A T1 line is rated at 1.544Mbps
2)  If there are 5 or so students downloading a 100kbyte file, yes they can use all the bandwidth, but they won't lock anyone else.  TCP/IP, being packet-based, will allocate whatever bandwidth is available to ALL requesting users.  The effect is everyone's connection rate will decrease in proportion to the number of people using the connection (depending on their own speeds, as well).

When performance planning for Moodle, while bandwidth is important, I think the stress should be on the hardware, in particular the hardware handling the database, because the sheer number of queries in Moodle is astronomical.
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In reply to Basil Gohar

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Let's do a rough calculation:

Take your 5 students, each requesting a 100 kbyte file, exactly at the same instant.

Let's also assume that each one hat a 500 kbit/s (download) broadband connection.

Then for 100*8/500 = 1.6 seconds each line'll try to download at those 500 kbit/s. That'll request 2.5 Mbit/s from the computer - which is not a big deal for a modern machine.

But as you pointed out the T1 can deliver only 1.54 Mbit/s, so that will throttle the whole thing.

Assuming all lines to be identical, the server will be able to deliver 1540/5 = 308 kbit/s per line and the students have to wait 2.7 s for the file.

The point is: even if you have a super computer on this side, the students have to wait those 2.7 seconds on the other side!
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
If I understand right, the 2 MBit/sec line will be shared amoung all the users (Moodle or not) in the school. If so, you are likely to have a bottle-neck.

What is the current utilisation? Do you keep stats, for example with MRTG?

If you use Moodle in a classroom, on command all the pupils will try to access the same document at the same time. If, as pointed out by Michael, that happed to be a bloated Word-Document, it could kill the fun sad

Of course I don't know the pattern of your users. But if the scenario above is valid, it makes sense to have a server within
the school LAN.

LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL(PostgreSQL)/PHP) is a proven, efficient plattform, and it is free!
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Duncan Smith -
Many thanks to all for the posts. Is it possible to access a web server via the LAN and also via the web? ie: when in school and the load will be at its greatest (as in the scenario of a class all accessing a word doc at the same time) pupils would access moodle over the LAN but pupils could still access moodle from home via the web if they wanted to review a document or file at their leisure?

I have not set up moodle for the school yet, only as a test site so have no useage stats unfortunately, but I forsee at least 90 users could be accessing at a time as lessons start and they access files.
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Your first question "server placed in school LAN, access from LAN as well as from home": The idea makes sense, and it is also the case in many schools.

Of course one needs a little bit of understanding about networking to do this. Here is a short description:

A school LAN is, as the name implies, "local". IE, the computers get "private" internet addresses (IP addresses) which are not visible from outside. But you want your web-server (Moodle runs on a web-server) to be visible!

The solution is to ask your internet service provider (ISP) to assign you some public IP addresses. They are given in blocks of 4, 8 or more.

Once you get those addresses you assign your web-server one of them _in addition_ to the private address. Of course the domain name system (DNS) and network routing should be adjusted, so that a common URL always points to your web-server.

For the URL you have various alternatives: http://moodle.myschool.ac.uk, http://myschool.ac.lk/moodle, http://www.myschool.ac.lk/moodle, etc. [Now for the impationt: Don't klick, the links are bogus!]

If you don't have the technical personnel, try recruiting somebody from your local community. You may even find a capable pupil. And if the server runs on free software you'll find the community helpfull. (That is exactly what happend in my son's school! [1]).

Your second question on "stats": I was refering to the _present_ traffic, to get an idea what remains from the bandwidth. The most popular tool for that is called MRTG, a Swiss product. Here it is being used in my former working place [2]

[1] http://www.ksimlee.ch/tech/ (German)
[2] http://www.learn.ac.lk/mrtg/sam-pdn.html

Visvanath

P.S. We are drifting from the main topic of this forum. I suggest moving further discussion to http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=50 or to a suitable newsgroup.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by David Hammond -
yup as someone mentioned it would be a much better idea to host it on your LAN at school. Then you have 100MB (or a 1000 perhaps?) to share between the students. you then get your ISP to give you a live address, so that when the student is at home they can still access it.

After school hours, your never going to have 1000 pupils log in at once. 10-50 is probably more realistic. plus a student may be logged in and reading, not downloading a file.



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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Going against the tide somewhat - I would say 2Mbits (a leased line of some sort I assume) will be plenty - *provided* that it is with a reasonable vendor, and there isn't too much latency or other difficulties. I have run 2M lines in the past for huge web projects, with no difficulties at all.

By the way - 2G RAM, not enough - buy as much as will fit and/or you can afford. It really does make the biggest difference smile

(P.S. If you need any more specific help on setting this up, feel free to give me a shout)
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hello Howard

"I have run 2M lines in the past for huge web projects, with no difficulties at all."

You are right! The question, whether a resource is sufficient, has no answer.

Talking about 2M lines, I remember celebrating the 64 kbit/s line for a campus with 7500 Students like we've won the olympic gold medal - in a developing country I must add.

"2G RAM, not enough"
smiley at the end tells everything, I believe.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: 2Mbits Internet Connection Speed for hosting moodle site?

by N Hansen -
My favorite story to tell is that of having a discussion about what sort of Macintosh to buy with my cousin's husband back in 1989. He was a physicist working for a US defense contractor so he had to have a powerful computer for his work. I will never forget the words he told me: "You'll never be able to fill a 20 MB hard drive."
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