One ISDN Line Enough?

One question that always comes up is whether a single ISDN line issufficient to support multiple users. After all, many individual telecommutershave a dedicated ISDN line. The answer is yes, with some minor caveats. An ISDNline will easily support half a dozen active users. Six active users typicallymeans 50 people who use the Internet for email, Web browsing, and occasionalfile downloading. Most users notice better performance when they use an ISDNline instead of an analog modem connection with lower throughput, only whenmultiple users are simultaneously downloading large amounts of data, such astransferring files from an FTP site or viewing Web pages with many images.

Using Microsoft's Proxy Server with a high-speed modem or ISDN adapter is alow-cost, high-performance alternative to more expensive dedicated lines. ISDNhas the advantage of providing faster connect times and faster throughput thananalog modems. Proxy Server makes the connection transparent to network users sothe network appears to have a dedicated connection to the Internet. A transientconnection can further reduce expenses by letting you use a lower cost dynamicIP account. Most ISPs have dynamic IP accounts for analog modems in the range of$20 to $40 per month. ISDN accounts are $10 to $20 more expensive but still muchless expensive than fixed IP accounts that typically run $250 or more per month.