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St. Edwards has incorporated remote instruction and staff operations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us are working, teachingor learningfrom home right next to significant others, roommates, spouses or children who are doing similar activities. Though we will return to the Hilltop in Fall 2021, being online and heavily relying on your internet is hardly a thing of the past.
So, what happens when so many of us are online so much of the time? And likely constantly multitasking? You may have noticed:
- Frozen faces and audio cutting out on Zoom
- Canvas announcements that post hours after they were published
- Webpages that seem to take forever to load
Surging Internet Traffic
These days we are all very online simply due to the state of working, learning and teaching today. A lot of us are connecting to the same applications and websites as everyone else, too.
If it seems like your internet has been moving at a snails pace, the problems youre noticing have more to do with the lowest tier of that infrastructure, which delivers internet to your home via internet service provider.
Recode has a good outlineof the differences between home internet service and enterprise internet service (like at universities, companies and other large organizations).
For starters, at home, you probably dont have unlimited bandwidth (the maximum rate of data transfer for your internet connection). Youll see slower download and upload speeds at home than at St. Edwards.
Those slower upload speeds are whats causing your Zoom meetings to freeze or go grainy. Typically, youre going to experience slower speeds at home than at work. The data from your meeting is going to take even longer to get from its source to your computer; its like taking a regular bus route when youre used to MetroRapid service.
What to Do About It
Unfortunately, theres not a lot we in OIT can do about this. But we as individuals? Thats a different story.
- Wi-Fi is a shared technology, and we all have our part to do in maintaining its quality. Fortunately, there are some ways you can ensure solid wireless connections for yourself and everyone else. Learn how to be a good Wi-Fi neighbor in our knowledge base article.
- Keep an eye on your internet speed. You can test your current internet speed at a variety of sites like fast.com, speedtest.net and testmy.net. Keep in mind, though: Each of these tests may be using different metrics to measure your speed, and results from any one of them may or may not reflect your actual experience.
- Use video only when its absolutely necessary. If you want to preserve the bandwidth you have, start by nixing video. If youre running a meeting or class session and want to check in visually with participants, consider starting off with a quick video hello and then switching to an audio-only connection. We all love Zoom virtual backgrounds, but they can eat up bandwidth.
- Stagger internet-connected activities in your own household. If youre watching a video or participating in a video chat for class or work, try to limit your other online activities. If kids or roommates are streaming Netflix while you try to host a Google Meet, everyones connection may slow down.
- Go wired if you can. If your wireless connection is slow, use an ethernet cable for a wired connection, which, typically, will be faster.
- Bookmark our System Statuspage for easy access to online status pages of the university's most used cloud services like Canvas, Google Workspace, Zoom, Panopto and more. These status pages will show you any slowdowns, interruptions or outages. If youre having problems with the services, everyone may be.
- Be patient with yourself and others. Inevitably, your meeting will freeze. Or your page wont load. Or some other online glitch will delay you. Its frustrating, but it will happen to you and everyone else. Were all (pause) absolutely (pause) in this together.