ATM and Frame Relay are higher-speed data transfer methodologies often associated with fiber optic rings found in larger metropolitan areas. Speeds in the multi-megabit range are typical. Only a few community information networks are likely to demand these speeds in the near term.
The cost of connecting from your premises to your ISP varies with speed and with distance. You can spend anywhere from under $50 per month to thousands of dollars per month. As a practical matter, most CI networking projects are unlikely to generate a large number of concurrent users. Also, most projects are not likely to deliver large quantities of data. An exception would a site that relies heavily on multimedia content (such as an audio voice archive) or on delivering large graphical images to many users (such as a geographical information system site). Therefore, many if not most CI sites can survive quite handily on a link such as a T1 line.
Many public libraries hosting a new CI site will have their own existing communications link. Such sites need merely evaluate whether their existing link has sufficient spare capacity to handle the new load induced by the CI site.
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