Understand your internet connection when working remotely
Your internet connection is based on what you have as a connection medium.
Since the lockdown began last Friday, many have been working from home using the internet to connect them to work resources.
The surge in users means there is some strain on the internet.
Netflix and other providers are downgrading their bitrates to accommodate the large amount of people currently online.
It’s important to understand what you can do to maximise your experience while working remotely.
Your internet connection is based on what you have as a connection medium.
If you are on fibre, you don’t have much to worry about as this is the most stable connection.
However, if you are running on LTE or ADSL/VDSL, you may experience issues as these are what we class as best-effort services.
If you’re finding your remote experience sluggish, here are a few tips for you from Wayne Erradu, technical director at Netconfig, an IT company, which will help you to have an optimised experience while you work.
Also read: Safer Internet Day: Google announces $1M child online safety fund in Africa
• Ensure that while working you aren’t also streaming video services, such as Showmax, DStv, Netflix or Amazon Prime, as this can affect your internet experience on best-effort services.
• If you are torrenting files, you will definitely experience poor internet performance as torrenting will take the maximum bandwidth on your internet connection. Consider torrenting afterhours or limit the bandwidth rate in the torrenting application.
• Understand that having many people on your wireless at home could also induce poor performance. Use an average of 5mbps for every person in your household. If you have a 20Mbps line and you have 4 people at home you should be okay for normal browsing. As soon as you stream or add another user you can expect poor performance while working.
• Most uncapped connections have what is called a fair usage policy (FUP). Since we are traditionally not at home as much as we are now, this is something to keep in mind. Your internet service provider (ISP) would have this published on their website. An example would be that some ISPs allow you up to 400GB per month, if you exceed this threshold they throttle your experience to half speeds. You may notice your internet speed decline around month end. Find out from your ISP what their FUP is.
• If you are on LTE, this works just like your cellphone does and you will need to find the best placement of the router in your house to receive the best signal. Just moving the router around may help you find better signal, giving you a better performance. Most routers have an indicator light which lets you know the strength of your signal.
• It is common to reboot your LTE device. If you are finding your internet to be a real pain, reboot your router. If the issue persists, reboot your notebook and see if this helps improve your experience.
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