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25th June 2008

NECC 2008 certain to challenge conference bandwidth limits

posted in edtech |

Steve Dembo’s June 2nd post to the NECC 2008 conference Ning, “Stream and be streamed,” generated quite a bit of discussion. One of the most interesting issues raised by commenters, in my view, was Brian Crosby’s remark about bandwidth in light of MANY impromptu, expected streaming sessions at NECC 2008. Brian wrote:

One thought … it seems to me that last year the wifi [AT NECC 2007 IN ATLANTA] was getting maxed out pretty regularly … I’m not sure of the reasons besides 13,000 attendees … but I remember some speculation on the Skype-chatting and just Skyping of presos that was occurring. That was new stuff last year and with the addition of Ustream and other bandwidth heavy apps might that not be an issue? Not trying to throw cold water on this … I think it’s a great idea … do we know if the wifi will be “broader” this year? Am I off base with this concern?

I wonder what the total bandwidth available on the public WiFi connection for NECC 2008 attendees will be? It would be VERY interesting to see a realtime graph of that bandwidth and its utilization published on the conference website somewhere using InterMapper or a similar bandwidth monitoring tool. It would be very interesting to not only monitor available and utilized conference bandwidth during the conference, but also look at the utilization stats and graphs following each day to see when they peak and ebb.

It will also be interesting to see what type of “smart network” technology will or will not be utilized on the NECC 2008 public WiFi network to limit or control bandwidth utilization. As Brian points out, if lots of people open up Ustream or other video broadcasts of sessions during the conference then the available bandwidth could be sapped quickly. This scenario reminds me of a story Alton Fields, superintendent of Pleasanton Schools outside San Antonio, told a group of administrators about their rollout of iBook laptops to their high school students several years ago. As soon as the students got their iBooks up and running, TONS of them logged into iChat and immediately started opening up audio and video chat connections. The school network at the time could not handle the traffic, so an administrator had to get on the PA system and ask all students to NOT use iChat for audio or videoconferencing at that time. I wonder if we’ll see a comparable scenario unfold at NECC this year? Hopefully not.

I’m going to BYOB this year to NECC. If the conference WiFi network is configured to block Ustream (which it certainly could be) then those attendees bringing their own bandwidth may be the only ones able to successfully live-stream. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. Regardless of the public WiFi configuration, I’m betting NECC 2008 is certain to stretch conference bandwidth limits to the limit– at least at some point! Hopefully the bandwidth available to conference attendees will be able to scale to meet demand!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 12:50 am and is filed under edtech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 5 responses to “NECC 2008 certain to challenge conference bandwidth limits”

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  1. 1 On June 25th, 2008, Richard Millwood said:

    I blogged about the Learning@School conference in Rotorua, New Zealand earlier this year, where 1200 turned up but over 900 connected laptops at some time. At first the wireles had trouble, but this was actually the server allocating IP addresses not the capacity of the wireless itself. I was astonished at the number of teachers bringing their ICT practice to the conference, but wondered whether this is the shape of things to come - what we all want, all of the time in connectivity and bandwidth.

  2. 2 On June 25th, 2008, Wesley Fryer said:

    Richard: Wow, those are some impressive numbers! I’d agree that 1:1 learning settings are EXACTLY what we want both at teacher professional development conferences/meetings and in our classrooms!

  3. 3 On June 25th, 2008, Bethany Smith said:

    I was just at the Moodle Moot in SF where EVERYONE had a laptop. My internet connection dropped every 5 minutes. It was beyond frustrating. It really tarnished the conference experience for me. I hope this does not happen at NECC. I’m *hoping* that the organizers have thought of this. On the other hand, maybe not dragging my laptop around all day is a good thing :) hmmm…

  4. 4 On June 25th, 2008, Steve Hargadon said:

    I believe that Anita at NECC said that they have a system to limit bandwidth for every IP address–which makes a lot of sense and would hopefully give everyone some base amount of access but not allow bandwidth “hogging.”

  5. 5 On June 25th, 2008, Brian Crosby said:

    Wes - I will have my wireless card too, but how well it will work inside the convention center is also an unknown. I guess we will find out!

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