Estimation: internet demand generated by a 1,000-student graduate campus

A university campus has 1,000 graduate students. Estimate how much internet bandwidth the campus needs to support them, showing each assumption and your arithmetic. ```hint Fix the unit first Decide whether your answer is a rate or a volume before using any numbers, then split the students' internet use into activities that consume very different amounts. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "bandwidth" mean the peak rate the campus internet connection must carry (Mbps or Gbps), or the total data the students use per day or month? - Do the students live on campus, so evening and weekend use counts, or are they only there for classes and research during the day? - Should faculty, staff, visitors and lab equipment be included, or only the 1,000 students? - Is research traffic, such as moving large datasets or using remote computing, carried on this connection or on a separate research network? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated unit and scope (rate or volume, who is counted, which hours) before calculating. - A breakdown of student usage by activity or behavior, each with a labeled per-user rate and share of students. - How the estimate accounts for students not all being online, or all being heavy users, at the same time. - Correct unit handling (bits versus bytes, per second versus per day) and clean arithmetic. - A sanity check against a familiar reference, plus the margin or growth the final number should carry. ### Follow-up Questions - If the connection is sold only in a few fixed sizes, how do you pick one, and what would you measure after the first month to confirm the choice? - How does your estimate change at the start of a semester, or in the week before a major submission deadline? - Which activities drive upload traffic, and does the connection need to be as fast upstream as downstream?