Our BAYU service has required hardware and software to build and maintain, as noted earlier. (See the Product Table.) We were able to keep these expenses down by using products we already owned or had licenses to use. We are currently investigating the possibility of eliminating the annual fee we pay Packeteer by replacing the traffic shapers on our existing servers with open source software. If this does not work, we may need to purchase additional traffic shapers as we expand the service.
Bandwidth and targeted audience size may also factor into your decision about what tools to purchase and/or use. For example, if you have abundant bandwidth available or a smaller student body, you may be able to use fewer traffic shapers than we use.
Our staff spent considerable time in preparatory meetings — up to 20 hours for some staff members. Technical staff spent about 40 hours setting up the system. Since BAYU was implemented, communication and residence hall computing staff typically have spent no more than a couple of hours per week on one or more of the following activities:
We were able to create and roll out the entire system in about two months for these reasons:
You may want to consider the time and funds you currently spend dealing with issues of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing and compare them to the cost of implementing a BAYU-like system on your campus.
Our BAYU service is functioning well for a user base of approximately 10,000 on-campus residents. To handle this amount of traffic, we use two traffic shaper units. One handles more traffic than the other, and neither is operating a full capacity.
These are some of the factors you will need to consider as you build your service:
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