I'm at the end of my rope here.

I'm doing a little consulting work for an organization in Washington D.C. They are essentially a "study abroad" campus for a well known university, and their building is more or less an old apartment building in the Cleveland Park area of D.C.

The building its self contains a few classrooms, a newsroom (there's a journalism aspect to the program), about 6 offices, a computer lab, and then four floors of student housing.

Currently, the building's internet is supplied over a bonded T1, so 3Mbps total. This (and half this) would be fine for everything I just mentioned except for the student housing, which consists of about 145 people. During the day, the offices get along fine, but in the evening the students complain of horrendous speeds.

The initial plan was to eliminate one of the two T1 lines, and put the students on something faster but less reliable. Well, we got that. Comcast came in and the connection was MUCH faster, but had an uptime of about 50%, and the company would not tell us what the problem was.

The next solution was to install a Covad-supplied DSL line. The speed was slower than Comcast and a little more expensive, but they had an SLA, so I figured it would be more reliable. The problem was, the guy who installed it was surprised they even sold us the product, because we were half again too far to receive the 6Mbps connection we were hoping for (which was slower than I wanted to begin with).

So that's where I am right now. We're back to the 3Mbps feeding the whole building. The students are rioting, and FIOS is approved for the city, but rollout probably won't start until the end of 2009, and who knows when it'll get to this part of Cleveland Park.

The campus has asked me for a solution by their fall semester, and they're not looking to spend anymore than they are now for two T1 lines.

Any suggestions?