23 March 2020 - Update 8 from ucisa - helping staff understand limitations of broadband, and Microsoft UK EduDay webinar, 23 March, 3pm
Helping staff to understand the limitations of broadband -
text for the ucisa community to re-purpose
Tomo, Infrastructure Architect at the London Business School shared this advice for LBS staff with the ucisa Networking Group and is happy for the community to repurpose the text:
“I personally have a concern that the broadband edge networks will become a lot busier next week as a majority of school children will be at home now, and I’ve penned this set of advice for our community which I thought would be useful to share here:
The UK’s broadband networks will be under considerable strain during this period where many of us will be working remotely, and the UK ISPs are doing what they can provide as much capacity as possible to support the country, but there are some common sense things we can all do to improve the situation and minimise our impact on network capacity
- Whilst you are logged into the VPN avoid using this device for other non-work internet services or streaming audio or video whilst the VPN is active.
- If you connect via Wifi make sure you have a good strong signal. Can you move closer to your router?
- Turn on your radio or watch broadcast TV rather than stream music or video whenever possible.
- If you have to stream video, can you reduce the resolution- reducing from 4K to HD, or HD to SD is about a 75% bandwidth saving each time.
- Be aware of what everyone else at home is doing on the internet and work with them to not overload things when you need to work.
- Giving your broadband router a reboot from time to time can help prevent issues, maybe once a week?
- Understand that domestic broadband connections are sold as a shared service and is designed to have contention, and at times of peak usage you cannot always expect to get the advertised speeds.
- Ensure you are aware of your broadband contract details, any usage limits, make sure you know the contact and account details for your ISP in case you need to talk to them for technical support.
You can trying to use 4G and a personal hotspot if performance on your wired broadband is poor, but
- understand your data usage limit, and
- if all data in your contract is available for use as tethering or if there is any fair use limit;
- use your phone to carefully monitor your data use, but make sure you have correctly set the day of the month when your allowances renew.”
Microsoft UK EduDay – Supporting remote teaching and learning in education webinar, 23 March 3:00pm
Microsoft are offering a 90 minute webinar to help universities and colleges to understand how remote or online learning may be delivered and supported.
