Required bandwidth??

We are setting up a lab and would like to be sure we have sufficient bandwidth to run SL on 10 computers at once.

What is the minimum bandwidth to run a copy of SL?

(I THINK our connection is 10 Gbps .... sure hope THAT'S enough!)

pr machine;
Normal use 2mbit+
with Video streaming 10mbit+ (can never have enough here)

Test the line youll see what actual speed you have
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

mmm...
Well, I think that 1 Meg per user is adequate in your situation. A 10 Meg connection to your ISP will be plenty of bandwidth for everyone in your lab.

Of course, IF everyone attempts to logon at exactly the same time, and each is in a texture rich environment when they rez, and each has cleared their cache, THEN they may see some delay...but it will be negligible.
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But one thing I want to clear up=>
The SPEED of that little port out the back of your PC is NOT the speed of your experience to SL. The speed of the experience will come from the slowest link in the IP roads between you and the SL servers in California. LindenLabs has some awesomely fast connections to the internet. Data gets distributed to the entire world.

=> Your particular speed experience will depend upon 3 links in that distribution system--
1. The Speed of your LAN. If you are using ethernet, you are almost certainly at speeds of 10Meg or greater. In your case, you say its 10 Gigs. If that's 10, one Gig ethernet cards, then the network is at 'one Gig' speed provided your router and hub can also go that fast. Otherwise, for your SL experience, its the slowest of the router or hub.
2. The Speed of your connection that you purchase from your Internet Service Provider--ISP. This could be a 1.5Meg DSL connection (my case at home). A 6M cable connection (the case of the lucky guy in the next county over). (A 45Meg connection from my company if I'm at work.)
3. The speed of the connection between your ISP and HIS upstream service provider. This will take a little investigation. Call and ask. Most ISP's are willing to tell you this, but most consumers don't know to ask. And of that speed, 'how full is it during the hours you want to be in SL?' THat's a little trickier to get, because many smaller ISPs don't know how their traffic patterns change during the day.

YOUR ACTUAL EXPERIENCE WILL DEPEND UPON the SMALLEST of these THREE FACTORS.

So. You're in Duluth, according to your Sig. It sounds like you're installing a new LAN with 10 PCs running fast ethernet out their backs. The 10 connections go to a router (perhaps with a hub first).
That router is connected (usually) to some sort of interconnect device that connects to your ISP. WHAT SPEED connection are you buying from the ISP? He has to move your data to the Twin Cities, to connect to the larger internet.

The speed at which you connect to your ISP is--90% of the time-- the constraint--because of availability of network capacity and your budget to buy it.

========================================
STERLING'S RULE of THUMB=> BUY AS MUCH BANDWIDTH AS YOU CAN AFFORD. (after memory in your PC, which is more critical to performance)

STERLING'S PRACTICAL RULE OF THUMB =>
One Meg per user is fine. NOt ideal but usable. 3 is w00t.

IN your case, when multiple users are playing SL over the same ISP connection, there are some abilities to 'statistically multiplex'. Put simply, below, without ANY scientific rigor, is a suggested size for connecting to your ISP:

# of Users, Usable Speed, w00t speed
1 1 Meg 3 Meg
2 1.8 Meg 4.5 Meg
3 2.6 Meg 8 Meg
4 3.4 Meg 9 Meg
5 4.0 Meg 10 Meg
...
10 7.0 Meg 18 Meg


Now if everyone logs in at exactly the same moment, lands in a texture rich area, and has just cleared their cache, then everyone will be slow as immense quantities of data are streamed in to all the users simultaneously....but that's not gonna be the typical situation.
More typical, while one person is rezzing, another is sorting inventory....they can share their internet capacity and all are happy.

For reference, here are some typical Network connection speeds and technologies that may be available from your ISP:

Dial Up 64 kilobit...don't even try
DSL 1.5, 3 Megabit
Cable Modems 6, 10, 15 Meg
'Telco Data' a T-1 which is 1.5 Megs (and then in multiples of 1.5) up to a DS-3 which is 45 Megs
Fiber 20, 40 Meg

Lots of special arrangements for other speeds are possible. These are the ones that are readily available.

If your lab is on a University campus, they MAY have a DS-3 connection. Larger universities have much much faster custom connections to the internet. THen your constraint is likely to be from other users--you'll be fighting off the astrophysicists who want to simulate blowing up Mars over the internet.

Sterling, very informative. Thanks!

thats not much web bandwidth...........Thili really to play with.

ahhh...Thili posted as I was writing.
Yes. There IS a special case...if all ten of your users were to watch video in SL at the same time, then you may need a little more bandwidth.
Bear in mind, though, that the rate for most streamed video is less than 500k/sec.
So my Rules of thumb should still work.

Most streamed video is 200-600 kilobit.
Most streamed audio is 64-128 kilobit.
SL wants 500-1000 kilobit just for itself.

So for maxed out video and sound and SL, it's about 1.7 megabits per computer.

However, conservation of resources is possible, if everyone is doing the same thing. Streaming media often tries to use multicast mode, where if someone else tries to access the same thing it doesn't require more bandwidth..... they just get a copy of the same stream the other person is using. So if all five are watching the same 500 kilobit multicast video stream, they only use 500 kilobit rather than 2,500 kilobit. This also holds true for audio.

SL clients on the same network do no data-sharing at all and has not been built to support that. So even if all five people are standing in the same area on the same LAN, each client has to redownload the same asset data for itself.

Scalar is right, multicast is available on the internet, but I've not seen it used in SL. It has to be set up at the broadcast end. And for your Lab to use it effectively as a means of reducing your ISP bandwidth requirement, you'd have to set up a router and server that would accept a single stream in and redistribute it to the workstations inside the Lab LAN. That's a pretty specialized LAN environment, Christien, and unless all your lab-mates are working on the same video, probably not worth the trouble and expense.

(NOTE: If you're in a Classroom situation and need to be sure everyone is in the same place on the video, then start a new thread in this forum. That's a different requirement with a much more technical answer. not the 'classroom' part, the 'everyone needs to be in the same place' part.... )

The thing about video is that its designed to keep going if some of its content is dropped. And if your AVI is standing around watching movies, thus not causing a lot of download, then most of the incoming data stream can be used for the video. In a 1 meg stream, there's usually plenty of room for a 500k movie.

Wow, my head is spinning! But this is all very good information. We start next week and will see how it goes.