My company offers co-location space, but we outsource the services to various datacenters all over North America....allowing us to not have to reply on a single center...

Now, I have a few local clients who want their server right in our local datacenter, where we, up until now, have only been hosting our shared and dedicated clients.

So, if we start offering co-location services here for our personel (local) clients, what is the best way to monitor and/or throttle the amount of bandwidth they can use from the lines?

Any input is appreciated.....

You have your own router? If so what kind?

Well, we were thinking of placing them on our back-up T1 since it never gets used and they are not interested in speed, just reliability and storage space.

For where we would place them, the following is in place:

Router: Cisco 1601 (1600 Series)
Switch: D-Link DSH-16

So you put your dedicated and shared clients on a backup t1 or you are just going to place colos on the backup t1? What modules does the 1601?

No.....I think you misunderstood...

We already have our own center here, with multiple lines and providers that we host our shared and dedicated customers on. (http://www.computicahosting.com/network.shtml)

Now.....we have a back-up T1 in place incase everything else goes down....

This customer of mine want to co-locate their servers at my location simply because of lack of storage space and they are currently hooked up to slow DSL lines.

Moving them into my location for them would be something I provide them, for hte most part, for free (because of other work we do with them on a consistent basis.)

But, I would like to throttle and/or limit the amount of bandwidth the servers can each use....if possible.

If setting something up like that is going to be complilcated and/or too expensive (since I am giving the space for free), I will probably just install them and give them full use of the T1......

Sorry if I am confusing....been awhile since I had a good sleep.....new puppy in the household that wakes up more than my first baby did.... :)

Ah ok. Do you run BGP4 for your other connections? I am *pretty* sure CAR (Committed Access Rate) is supported on the 1601 but I have never worked with anything that small. Try the following commands on your router.
Login
en
conf t
int fastethernet0/0 (or any other interface)
rate-limit ?
ctrl z

That should display something like this

aggr1.nyc(config-if)#rate-limit ?
input Rate limit on input
output Rate limit on output

If so then you have support for CAR. You can then cap your client at whatever you want them to use. Then setup MRTG to monitor bandwidth via SNMP. Wala. All done.

Thanks........will give that to a tech and have him give it a shot....(I am not the tech around here... :) )